TEL AVIV.- The Zik Group was established in 1985 by artists from various fields: sculpture, painting, ceramics and performance. The group’s activities combine installations with dance, music, film and theater, creating one-off works that are time- and site-specific and occasionally interactive and with audience participation. The group's sculptures are created from a combination of various materials, mostly readily available such as wooden planks, plywood, tar, glass and clay.

Minaret of Defense, the group's latest work, was designed especially for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art's Lightfall and is exhibited during Israel's 68th Independence Day. The work refers to the Museum's proximity to the ‘Kiryah’, a government and military campus which features the imposing Marganit Tower, the offices and communications skyscraper. The construction is also visually reminiscent of a minaret, the distinctive architectural feature of a mosque. A further facet of the structure refers to the security- and occupation-driven Wall and Tower settlement drive of the 1930s. The wooden towers constructed at the center of the new settlement for security reasons might be perceived as resembling the mosques of the adjacent villages. The black pool, with its threatening reflective appearance, is a recurring motif in the group's work and is exhibited here in place of the well, the source of life at the center of Arab villages as well as a reference to the Kirya's "pit."

The image which is characteristic to many of the group's works dealing with memory and with layers of the past, refers conceptually and physically to the local history of Tel Aviv. It references its past as a city built partially on the ruins of Arab villages, such as Sheikh Munis, Jarisha, Summayl, Abu Kabir and Salama. Furthermore, the tower refers not only to the past and the present, but also to the near future: the multitude of skyscrapers crowding the city, at times erasing its cultural and religious heritage, due to the territorial battle taking place in it.

In its various contexts, then, the image merges the contradictions of the various narratives. It represents the worship of the military and points to the link with the surrounding Muslim space and the conflict with it.