Rooftop installation brings searing Oct. 7 imagery and poignant lyrics to Azrieli Mall

For nearly three years, lyricist Noam Horev and photographer Ziv Koren have used their respective crafts to portray the stories of Israelis affected by the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023.

“I became a father in October 2023, and my partner was on reserve duty, and I ran away to my writing,” Horev told The Times of Israel. “I felt this need to write my emotions about the feelings of the nation and the optimism that you still sometimes felt.”

Koren, a photojournalist, took his motorcycle south on October 7 to capture the unfolding horrors of the Hamas massacre.

Now the two have partnered with the Azrieli Group to present “We Will Rise,” an emotional, multi-layered installation that opened June 9 and will remain on view through October.

The exhibit is on display in a roughly 500-square-meter (roughly 5,400-square-foot) gallery purpose-built for the show on the roof of Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Mall.

The installation features 10 large-scale structures, each one featuring narrated text written by Horev over Koren’s photographs — images that are familiar, sometimes traumatic, often haunting.

Throughout the approximately 45-minute tour, visitors move through the different stations equipped with a personal audio system in Hebrew or English.

Portrayed are moments from October 7 as soldiers witness the destruction and devastation, later as Israelis struggled to bring home the 251 hostages abducted to Gaza, and as the country turned itself into a volunteer force to help those in need.

Other images resonate as well: a wall of stickers of those who were killed, a pile of hostage dog tags, photos of the injured and maimed as they rehabilitate themselves, the face of former hostages Gadi Mozes in the potato field of his beloved Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Horev’s words give voice to the visuals, and are sometimes intertwined with the testimony of others — such as surveillance soldiers who write about the first moments of their abduction, when they wondered whether they were alive or dead.

The exhibit’s end holds powerful scenes of the hostages’ return home, their reunions, and their gradual return to daily life.

“We had been looking for a way to give an artistic platform of what we’ve all been through,” said Danna Azrieli, CEO of the Azrieli Group. “We’re trying to create images and photographs where everyone finds themselves.”

Both Koren and Horev published books about this period; Koren’s latest is “The Return in October,” a new photography book that follows his previous volume, “The Seventh of October.”

While some of Horev’s texts and poems were written for the installation, others were drawn from his book “Transparent Threads.”

Koren calls the installation “an attempt to engage with the living memory of this period — its pain and loss, but also its vitality and the capacity to rise.”

Horev and Koren were already acquainted and were tossing around different ideas when Azrieli joined the project.

“You’re always a little worried when a big organization joins, because you worry that it might lose its soul,” said Horev. “But it was so important to them to commemorate these moments, they really put art at the forefront.”

“This nation is a miracle,” said Horev. “They tried to chase us and kill us, but we’re still here and still having kids and growing fields and rebuilding houses. There are so many problems, but it’s the people that you feel. So this project is a song of tribute to this nation.”