‘No words’: Soldiers, immigrants, sabra artists exhibit together in Jerusalem
Group exhibition marking one year since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack brings mix of oils, watercolors, drawings, photographs and installations to Jerusalem Biennale gallery
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
A chance meeting with Australian artist Avraham Vofsi, who immigrated to Israel just before October 7, 2023, led Jerusalem Biennale director Rami Ozeri to mark the first anniversary of the devastating Hamas terrorist attack with an exhibition.
Vofsi’s large-scale oil, “The Car Wall Outside Kibbutz Tkuma,” dominates the back wall of the Jerusalem Biennale gallery. It depicts a towering wall of burned, bullet-ridden, wrecked cars driven by those trying to escape the terrorist rampage at the Nova desert rave.
Vofsi decided he would paint the stories of that day until something human and tender could emerge from the devastation — and felt he succeeded in the rays of sunlight that reached toward the field.
It’s one of 20 artworks exhibited in “No Words,” a haunting, intimate group exhibition marking one year since October 7, displayed in the permanent Jerusalem Biennale gallery in the city’s former Shaare Zedek building on Jaffa Road.
The group show of 12 artists, which opened on October 7 and closes at the end of November, is meant to display all points of view, said Ozeri, who curated the show with independent curator Hillie Wurtman Moyal.
“Everyone is in pain. There are so many tragedies piling up but people end up getting political and taking a side,” said Ozeri, referring to the tug-of-war that has ended up pitting those who are pro-war against those pushing for a hostage deal for the remaining 97 hostages held in Gaza for over a year. “We said we wanted to bring many points of view, to say that we’re all in this together.”
Ozeri, who founded the Jerusalem Biennale in 2013 and hoped to celebrate its first decade last fall, instead delayed the event to the spring, exhibiting throughout museums, galleries and spaces in the city.
From Vofsi’s work, Ozeri and Moyal expanded their search, contacting artists with works created after October 7.
There is Yaron Steinberg’s “Kibbutz House III,” after he was evacuated from his kibbutz home in the north, and two oils by Elkana Levi, an artist and reservist whose self-portrait in his IDF uniform is a reminder of how he hates war, wants to live and will fight for what he believes in.
There are several works by Andi Arnovitz, a Jerusalem artist and regular Biennale contributor who brings her usual mix of media to “Evidence 1,” featuring evidence boxes holding bloodied baby clothing, an attempt for Arnovitz to exorcise some of the pain of what was done to and in front of small children on that terrible day.
Arnovitz also created dozens of tiny stacks of laser-cut houses, channeling the tens of thousands of evacuated families still living in cramped hotel rooms, as well as the images of charred remains of homes in Gaza and Israel, for “Displaced.”
She also brought her 2014 work, “Mothers and Sons,” a series about mothers of combat soldiers, which was magnified in the 2014 Gaza war when Arnovitz had three sons-in-law who were called up, a situation that repeated itself in the last year.
As in any Biennale-related exhibit, there are works by both native-born Israelis and immigrant artists, harkening to Ozeri’s own life as an Israeli married to an American, living in Jerusalem, and deeply connected to the city’s large English-speaking community.
That mix of art created by Jews of different stripes is present in every Biennale, as Ozeri aims to focus on contemporary Jewish art, not necessarily only Israeli, to “open and refresh the conversation,” he said.
“People here have a very specific notion of what being Jewish is,” said Ozeri. “Being Jewish can be so many things and we can bring that and introduce it through art.”
Ozeri pointed out that Anglo-Israelis, as English speakers are often called in Israel, are a necessary element in the Israeli art scene, with their deep connection to the Jewish world of content and their comfort with Jewish subjects.
They’re open and knowledgeable about the contemporary art world and its universal values and its language, said Ozeri.
“It’s a rare combination to find,” he said.
He continues that conversation of Anglo and Israeli reactions to October 7 in “No Words,” weaving it in with an oil by Debbie Kampel about the issue of humanitarian aid being allowed into Gaza by Israel next to a Shai Azoulay painting that channels the artist’s residency at the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Azoulay’s residency began on October 8, throwing him into the world of the Holocaust during those first days of trauma after the worst massacre the State of Israel has ever experienced.
Ozeri often finishes a tour of the gallery with one corner of the room and the works by Keren Shpilsher, an Israeli artist who has been posting her daily paintings on social media.
Four of them are displayed in the exhibit, including “Life,” about the six hostages killed by Hamas in Gaza at the end of August, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lubanov and Ori Danino.
Right next to Shpilsher’s works is Joan Roth’s small framed photograph, “Week of Goodness,” offering an ending of sorts to the exhibit, featuring Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Golberg-Polin, with a Torah scroll that was dedicated in the name of their son and the rest of the hostages, a month before they were executed in a southern Gaza tunnel.
“It shows all the kinds of people who live here, in Jerusalem,” said Ozeri, gesturing at the prayerful look on their faces and what is signified by the fact that Goldberg-Polin, a religiously observant Anglo-Israeli woman is the one holding the Torah scroll. “The kind of people who see all sides of a story.”
