(live here in the museum) - The new exhibition season of the Haifa Art Museum will open on 1/8/24, and will include six solo exhibitions by female artists who live in the north of the country or who grew up in the northern settlements. The exhibitions are opening at a time when tens of thousands of civilians have been evacuated from their homes in settlements in the north of the country for about 9 months.
The evacuated settlements, as well as those that are not evacuated, are constantly bombarded from Lebanon, fires are raging in the Galilee groves and a war threatens to break out.
Sali Abed - Chairman of the Board of Directors of Haifa Museums
Yotam Yakir - CEO of Haifa Museums
According to Kobi Ben-Meir, the chief curator of the Haifa Art Museum:
At a time of pain, anger and terror, the museum is making a gesture of trust and support for the forces of creativity, beauty and life in the northern part of the country - from the Jezreel Valley, through Haifa and the Kiryat to the conflict line in the Upper Galilee and the Western Galilee. Six solo exhibitions for female artists from this country together unfold a variety of ways of looking at being a woman in Israel. Each artist relates in her own way to the horror of war and examines physical boundaries alongside geographical and cultural frictions. The salvation they offer takes on the image of a creative and compassionate community of women.
Rachel Enyo: A character comes to life
curator: perfusion oz.
Rachel Anyu was born and raised in Kiryat Yam, her exhibition was also created as part of the "Space Art Incubator" project of the Haifa Museums. Enyo recruited 13 women of different ages of Ethiopian origin for the project, and together they explored their culture through work in the collage technique. On the basis of a database of images prepared by Anyo from her family albums, the participants created collages under the guidance of the artist. Anio disassembled and assembled these collages into her own new collages, and based on papers with different textures she sculpts XNUMXD collages.
Through the disassembly and assembly of the images, Anyo learns her Ethiopian identity and reacquaints herself with her culture. Against the way in which the Ethiopian identity was defined from the outside by the old Israeli society, Enyo
Creates a cultural self-definition from within and builds a story in which the Ethiopian women are the protagonists.
The gallery for the whole family of the Haifa Museum of Art, dedicates its activity to the collage technique inspired by the exhibition. The space was designed in collaboration between Rachel Anyo and architect Ariel Armoni, and will invite visitors
to create collages from that pool of images, and participate in an emerging display of their works. The gallery will also make it possible to get to know important elements of Ethiopian material culture, according to stories by Rachel Anyo.
The exhibitions were made possible thanks to the generosity of the Shusterman Foundation - Israel; Ann and Dr. Ari Rosenblatt, Los Angeles; The Lottery Council for Culture and Art; Outset Foundation for Contemporary Art; British Friends of the Israel Art Museums; Boston Haifa Partnership.
Ella Litvitz: To chaos and confusion is their passion
curator: Kobi Ben-Meir.
Ella Litvitz, a multidisciplinary artist, was born in Haifa, and is presenting her largest solo exhibition to date at the museum. Her exhibition will feature new works in sculpture, photography and video, centered around an eight-channel sound work commissioned by the museum. Litvitz's sound work is an instrumental arrangement with trumpets of the "War of the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness", the latter-day war described in the Qumran scrolls.
The sounds of work are the melody of the war between absolute good and absolute evil, and their spread in space unfolds as a choreography of combat. Litvitz's work echoes the passion of humans for war and also the human hope that light will emerge from chaos. Between the sounds of war, sculptural works from salt, copper and magnesium that are in constant change, and becoming something else. Litvitz's exhibition examines the disintegration processes of
Materials and cultures and possibilities of transformation.
Hadar Saipan: Patrol
curator: Kobi Ben-Meir.
Hadar Seifen was born in Kibbutz Dafna in the Upper Galilee and now lives in Kibbutz Gesher Ziv in the Western Galilee. In her exhibition, she presents a group of video works and photographs, in all of which she functions as a soldier: she observes aircraft, opens axes, patrols around evacuated settlements and shoots with her camera. The invasion of Israel in October 2023 sharpened the role of citizens in protecting their home - citizens who felt abandoned by the state, and chose to fill the vacuum left by the official institutions themselves.
In addition to a video work whose filming was completed before October 7, the exhibition includes two new series of photographs created after the evacuation of the Galilee settlements and with the support of the museum. Since the evacuation of the northern settlements in October 2023, Saifan has made several night trips on the roads near the Lebanese border and photographed their surroundings. Almost nothing is visible in her photographs except darkness, and the only signs of life in the isolated settlements are the lighting of the security roads that surround them. In the images created - there is no glittering jewelry, there is no suffocating fences - there is no trace of the life that was supposed to fill the settlements; In their place, a black void remains.
Leah Talmore: From the Darkness
curator: Shahar Doron.
Lehia Talmor, a print artist, lives in Kibbutz Adamit, from where she moved to Acre in recent months. Talmore, born in 1944, has exceptional knowledge and abilities in the photographic printing technique, and this is the first comprehensive museum exhibition dedicated to her work. The exhibition summarizes the work of Lehia Talmore over the past two decades and presents extraordinary inventiveness and innovation in well-known printmaking techniques. The print allows Telmore to follow what is absent and make it present again, while revealing the feelings and meanings contained in it.
Her work often begins with a photograph of a space that has traces of conflict. From the photograph Telmor peels back layers, subtracts and adds elements, dissects and connects, until the final image moves away from the photographs from which it was born and creates another place.
Merv Sudai: Bat-Ella
curator: Kobi Ben-Meir.
Merav Sudai was born in Nahariya and currently lives in Kibbutz Gevat. The exhibition space became a cave with painted walls, as a ritual site for an ancient goddess. She draws inspiration from wall paintings in Hindu and Buddhist temples and monasteries, replacing all the figures with the image of one woman, her image.
This installation of paintings consists of a layered series of self-portraits, in which Sudai examines her naked body as an object for the painting while looking inwardly at herself, as a subject. Applying diluted paint to the canvas, she piles transparent layers on top of each other, which hide or reveal ghostly underlayers of female nudity. In the game between exposure and concealment, recognition of inner strength alongside a display of vulnerability, Sudai unfolds the variety of physical and mental sensations that result from being a Eve.
Liron Hana Ohion and Amit Gabish: 6+1
curator: perfusion oz.
Liron Hana Ohion and Amit Gavish live in Haifa, and their exhibition was created as part of the "Space Art Incubator" of the Haifa Museums. The artists present a video installation in six channels, showing six actions carried out with the help of a group of six women in the Haifa public space. The essence of the actions in dealing together with personal passions and fears. The urban space seems threatening and gloomy at times, but the participants move freely in it
fear.
In times of crisis that undermines trust in official institutions, the work examines the importance of civil leadership and the power of good neighbors to save each other. Gabish and Ohion create a parable about a city-night, where
Female artists take responsibility for the public order and offer a common and compassionate matriarchal order, which is all faith in man.
Opening event - admission is free
- Date: 1 / 8 / 24
- Time: 19:00
- Closing of the exhibitions: 4.1.25
- Address: Haifa Museum of Art, 26 Shabtai Levy, Haifa
It takes a lot of courage to open an exhibition precisely on a day when the media is preparing us for an attack on Israel
Surely many were afraid to come. But an art museum should be a brave place and the public loves culture. They will not break Haifa. We will continue to make and see art and celebrate and enjoy and develop things and grow
This is the real victory over the enemy.
יש כל כך הרבה אמנים מעולים בחיפה ואתם לא מציגים אותם שנים.באנו מספר פעמים למוזיאון חיפה שרמתו מבישה.
I wonder what would happen if they showed only 6 male artists and emphasized that it was a group exhibition of men?
Why gender?