The Group Exhibit “Chayim al ha Kav” (Living en Route) brings together the work of seven artists whose creations are generated by an ongoing dialogue between two cultural and geographical points of reference: Yosef Joseph Dadoune (Tel Aviv-Paris), Alona Harpaz (Tel Aviv-Berlin), Naomi Leshem (Tel Aviv-Zurich), Motti Ruimy & Paul Kearns, (Tel Aviv-Dublin), Netta Tauber (Tel Aviv-Amsterdam), and Aviv Maoz, (Tel Aviv-Rome).

In ‘Postcard in a Glass Breeze Block’, art-architect team Motti Ruimy & Paul Kearns send anonymous messages between two distant cities – Dublin and Tel Aviv -exploring the proximity of strangers, yet the intangibility of others within the urban fabric.

Netta Tauber’s transparent photograph printed on silk ‘You are Here’ underlines the vulnerability of longing for home. The portrait’s simultaneous presence and absence reflects the transitory nature of cultural territory.

The vistas in Naomi Leshem’s ‘Runway’ series of analogue photographs places us on the perimeter of our ‘here and now’ and our envisioned destination. Is it the sand of Israel or the snow of Switzerland that covers the route ahead? In her photograph taken at the Sea of Galilee from the ‘Way to Beyond’ Series, an ephemeral moment of farewell is framed.

Alona Harpaz (represented by Sommer Gallery, Tel Aviv) ‘Untitled’ abstract painting floats above the Atlantic Ocean, a bird’s-eye view of place, culture, and self.

Yosef Joseph Dadoune’s 16mm silent film ‘Sion’ was shot in the Louvre starring Ronit Elkabetz, who embodies ‘Zion’. The work is an allegory about Jerusalem in the mirror of time, taking a stand regarding the West’s cultural vision of Sion/Jerusalem. His art is refracted through the prism of his encounter and engagement between Diasporic and local Israeli socio-political discourse.

Aviv Maoz mixed media print ‘No-Man’s Land’ captures the contradictory static yet dynamic nature of perpetually being on the road.

All artists share in common a stereo-perception of the world, the result of a round-trip trajectory of back and forth between two cultures. This permanent Odyssey, infused by historic echoes of Diaspora, engenders a unique aesthetic position. They inhabit an amorphous space in between ‘native’/‘foreigner’ ‘insider’/outsider’, where instinctive knowledge of home is continually confronted, uprooted, and re-examined. Their bilingual visual languages pronounce new vocabularies of cultural subtexts. Their work repeatedly takes off and lands, offering fresh perspectives of the ‘here’ and ‘there’ and the line connecting them.

Curated by November Wanderin