Ash
Limbos Gallery, Tel-Aviv

The exhibition 'Ash' is part of a broad project named 'The Burned Forest'. The exhibition consisted of several installation works at the Limbos gallery space, which is located in a public shelter. At times of war it is transformed back to being a shelter. The contents in this work draw mainly on our insights as a third generation to the Holocaust: autobiographical materials, childhood memories and pain which are passed form one generation to another. The systematic ongoing dialogue between us in this exhibition is focused on conventions of memorialization and remembrance. In a reality where individual memory is being pushed aside in favor of national ceremonies and where Holocaust images have become an integral part of our collective memory as a nation, this work deals with the heritage of the personal Holocaust experience, which refuses to be pushed aside and remains a molding experience. At the entrance to the shelter, at the upper floor, the work 'Still Floating' is presented. It is composed of a series of floating images, video stills. Floating, a motif which reoccurs in previous works as well, represents a mental state of being detached from the body, detachment which is in fact a coping mechanism allowing some distance and the possibility to look at reality from a different point of view. In our previous exhibition, 'Garden of Floating Events', the video works featured floating images, for instance 'Rivka'le', in which a floating woman is projected onto the dead grass, accompanied by the soundtrack of a Yiddish lullaby. In Lital and Eyal's terminology, floating represents an intermediate state where the body is being watched but the soul finds shelter by embracing a higher existential, metaphysical state. Whereas in 'Rivka'le' this intermediate state is between life and death, in the current series, floating is a metaphor to a basic dividing line between reality and the emotional space existing beyond this reality. The location of this series of photographs in the upper level marks the moment of transformation in which the viewers are invited to participate before descending to the lower level, the shelter. A burned forest is a given situation. After the fire, between extinction and rejuvenation, it bears the traces of what happened. Scorched, scared, hurting. Still breathing, but in a different way, not as before. The descending staircase leads to the work 'Nest', an installation dealing with the motif of the burnt wood. The gathering of burnt branches, in a series of burnt wood sites, is the basis of the video in the installation, 'Gathering'. The sites of burnt woods represent various stages of extinction. Some of them were photographed during a fire, some in the following day or week and yet others after months and even years. The video is projected all over the back wall of the gallery and elongates the gallery, in a virtual manner, from the inner space outwards. The gallery floor is covered with ash which was gathered from various sites of burnt woods alongside gathering branches for nest building. The surface of the ash is not homogenous. Each forest and its own ash, each fire and its unique traces. The activity in the gallery is a continuation to the activity in the forest. The margins of the space are marked by 'Sloughs' – men figures which are coming out of the ash. These sculptures are made of metal nets and define the volume of the body whilst making it possible to penetrate into the male body. These figures were made by building a cage on the body after which the cage is "emptied" from the male presence. In the center of the installation, between the two lines of 'Sloughs', a nest was built from burnt branches. These are the same branches which were gathered through wandering in the burnt woods presented in the video work. The 'Nest' is placed at the center of the installation and embodies two opposite concepts: longing for a cozy home on the one hand; transience, exposed and penetrable space on the other hand. It provides doubtful shelter and causes the present-absent within to be in a state of vulnerability and transparency. The work 'Polish Traces' deals with the illusiveness of memory. The basis of this work is a family photograph dating back to 1935, which depicts four women from Eyal's family, who vanished in the Holocaust. The work consists of 4 portraits originating in one family photo dismantled into separate portraits on transparencies, placed on wooden boxes. The light cast a shadow of their faces on the wall, seeming real and tangible more than the photograph itself. This process supposedly stresses the individuality of each of the women, but trough the treatment of the individual portraits, actually makes them fade away rather than remaining memorable. 'I Got My Grandmother's Name' is made of a series of oil portraits on Hallah slices, which are placed in a narrow yet lit corridor. The entrance into an equally well lit space out of the darkness of the front space creates an experience of close and intimate observation. The obsessive, repetitive lines used to paint the portrait are made through watching a fading, small photograph appearing alongside the story of Lital's grandmother, in the book of survivors from her community. The colorfulness of the portraits expresses an emotional intensity and turmoil deriving from the grandmother's memoirs. These are told in a concise and restraint manner albeit encompassing unconceivable traumas and unhealed wounds of insanity. Painting the portrait on the Hallah is an attempt to deal with the scars she left after her death. The painted slices of bread are placed in boxes which remind Christian relics containing the Holy Mother. A round hole at the top of each box allows in some light which creates a halo above the portrait. Such treatment of the object poses a contrast between the "unholy" memories, wounds and pain and the figure which is being painted as holy. This is the conflict which exists between the Jewish order not to speak ill of the dead, and the need to rid oneself of secrets hidden behind closed doors. The two works, 'Polish Traces' and 'I got My Grandmother's Name', which deal with portraits of family members, challenge prevailing memorializaiton concepts. One through transparency and disappearance, the other – through undermining classical painting traditions of immortalization by using oil paint on Hallah slices – an organic, consumed material which by its own consumption makes "immortalization" temporary as well. The position of 'I Got My Grandmother's Name' creates a lit space leading to the video work 'Embracement'. A wreath of thorns is being tightened to Lital's exposed body while Eyal watches, documents and demonstrates her pain. The bandages do not offer solace and comfort to "the remembering body", but rather force it to bottle its pain inside. The sting of the thorns and the pain involved with passive observation create a motif which also appeared in 'Women's Choir' in which dressing the body repeats in three variations on three video screens. In 'Women's Choir' each video presents bandaging from a different viewpoint which actually represents various cultural concepts. In the current video, 'Embracement', Our ongoing discussion with viewpoints is expressed in choosing two different points of view: a straight look at the torso which expresses pain through "neutral" watching, and an upward look in the close ups of the head, which converses with a classical religious and cultural viewpoint to do with sacrifice and torments. The soundtrack in this work, the sound of the waves which fade away as they reach the shore, delineates the sound in the exhibition into a narrow spectrum – between the rhythm of the waves in the deep space of the gallery and the silence offered by the floating images in the upper space.