TEL AVIV.- The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is presenting From her wooden sleep…, a large-scale installation created by renowned German-born, Canadian artist-curator Ydessa Hendeles in 2013. First exhibited at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 2015 (curator: Philip Larratt-Smith), Hendeles has now developed her tightly choreographed tableau vivant specifically for TAMA’s Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art. Hendeles’s narrative unfolds for TAMA over three galleries, with a suggestive new departure referencing the apocryphal, yet deeply entrenched story of the veil of Saint Veronica from Christ’s Passion and a new ending in a mysterious crypt-like space. Central to From her wooden sleep… is a remarkable and unique collection of more than 150 wooden artists’ manikins assembled by the artist over 20 years. Ranging in date from 1520 to 1930 and in scale from palm-size to life-size, the manikins in the central gallery surround a lone figure nakedly exposed to their collective gaze. The intense scenario casts viewers as outsiders—or, at least, as bystanders—in a society defined by some basic characteristics they do not share.

From her wooden sleep… continues Hendeles’ exploration through art, artefacts, found objects and audio of difference and diversity, and the way representation and distortion, appropriation and assimilation can filter group and individual identities. The title of the exhibition is taken from Florence K. Upton’s best-selling 1895 children’s book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a “Golliwogg,” about the nocturnal Christmas Eve adventures of two wooden peg dolls and the first black protagonist in English picture books. Created and named by Upton, Golliwogg became a much-loved character despite his relationship to prevalent racial stereotypes acceptable at the time. In the mid-20th century, the character became a controversial symbol of racism, his very name used as a racist slur. In this revised staging of From her wooden sleep…, the Golliwogg figure is the secular starting point for Hendeles’ pointed presentation of the way shared values and belief systems play out in cultural and social dynamics—for better and for worse.