U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art

Opening Events

Address: 25 Hillel St.

Sunday 10.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (times will be announced)

Behind the Mask

Curators: Vera Pilpoul, Ermanno Tedeschi

The Book of Esther is an important, unique spiritual and religious asset and an inalienable cultural legacy of the Jewish people. Of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, only two are named after women: Ruth and Esther. In The Book of Esther, we uncover the heroic metamorphosis of Esther, who changes her nation’s destiny by being conscious of her religious legacy.

Behind the Mask presents interpretations and possible contexts for reading the Book of Esther, enabling us to feel, with vivid passion, the profound relevance of this ancient book to our history as a nation and as women today.

The works chosen for this exhibition were created by artists from Italy and Israel, who have interpreted the themes and narratives in a plethora of styles. The practice of disguise, of hidden identity, has been given spiritual significance over the generations, and emerges in many cultures. 

The selected works also reveal a unique curatorial interpretation of Esther’s story, the meaning inherent in it, and the symbolism surrounding it. This creates a broader elucidation of Esther that includes feminist, sociological, and historical perspectives. 

Threading

Curator: Emily D. Bilski

Artists Heddy Breuer Abramowitz; Linda Lieff Altabef; Andi Arnovitz; Lynne Avadenka; Raya Bruckenthal; Beryl Korot; Rachel Tauber

Threading explores the rich reservoir of cultural assets created by Jewish women, emphasizing textile arts both as medium and as metaphor. 

The exhibit includes both upcycling fabrics with personal significance to create new artworks, as well as evoking traditional textile techniques, such as weaving and embroidery, deployed as visual motifs in other media including video, wood, metal, and paper. 

Notably, this will be the first Israeli exhibition to include work by video art pioneer Beryl Korot (USA). Works by seven contemporary artists are displayed in conversation with historical Judaica, made and donated by women, from the Museum of Italian Jewish Art’s collection.

Seeds of Memory

Curator: Elizabeta Zaidner

Artists: Yael Boverman-Attas, Nava T. Barazani, Mikhal Miki Gamzou, Elizabeta Zaidner, Noemi Tedeschi Blankett 

Longing is Like the Seed

Longing is like the Seed

That wrestles in the Ground,

Believing if it intercede

It shall at length be found.

The Hour, and the Clime-

Each Circumstance unknown,

What Constancy must be achieved

Before it see the Sun!

                                                 -Emily Dickinson

For the artist, memories are a tangible raw material. Out of moments, experiences, objects, and snapshots from the past, the artist recollects, recategorizes, and reconstructs.

Seeds of Memory presents five artists: Yael Boverman-Attas, Nava T. Barazani, Mikhal Miki Gamzou, Elizabeta Zaidner and Noemi Tedeschi Blankett; Five bodies of work; five memories; five techniques. Each material and technique offers a different way of remembering and being remembered.

The pieces invite the viewer to come closer and observe. This is attentive art, created via a feminine ability to see in the seemingly small thing its full potential and power.

The Jerusalem Botanical Gardens

Opening Events:

Address: Yehuda Burla St 1, Jerusalem

Friday 22.03.2024 at 10:00-13:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Sensory Heiress

Curator:

Stephanie Young

Artists:

Christine Atkinson, Marcy Brafman, Jason Bryant, Jennifer Deppe Parker, Diana Wege

The exhibition Sensory Heiress suggests a  unique look at the metaphors found in Mother Nature and examines how they correlate to the power and legacy of women.

A Place to Belong 

Lilach Schrag

A Place to Belong installation is part of an on-going attempt to create familiar yet alternative narratives by examining existing myths. The videos in the installation depict hybrid creatures and plants that fuse with the forest, field, or lake. These archaic beings are the personification of isolated natural environments, and are able to shift their shape or cause others to undergo metamorphosis.  The mundane daily activities they perform in their habitat are embedded in the thicket of an imaginary environment that contains materials from nature and from the human environment such as feathers, parts of cloaks, and "treasures" that were collected and preserved (including worn-out farm materials and tools). "A Place to Belong" offers a glimpse into the thick of the forest or the depths of the soul, where unconscious activity of miraculous forces takes place. This is a metaphorical attempt to adapt, belong, and sometimes struggle with the surrounding or the self, and confront the intimate with the universal. I offer this installation as a possibility of an alternate existence in a world of fantasy where miraculous creatures of nature are able to assimilate, merge, and disguise themselves in order to recharge and survive.

Hamiffal

Opening Events

Tuesday 12.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Seamlines and Loophole

Curator: Avital Wexler

Artists:  Kobi Vogman, Yifat Shtainmetz-Hirst, Noa Arad-Yairi, Brian Micheal Reed, Gabriella Klein

Seamlines and Loophole are part of a set of exhibitions of the Jerusalem school of art at HaMiffal, investigating the nature of Jerusalemite art and its relationship to geographical space, history, collaboration, and civic social action. 

Seamlines comprises five site-specific installations created at HaMiffal during an artist residency program under the auspices of The Jerusalem Biennale. The projects directly address the historic mansion as well as life there, in the past and present. 

Loophole 

Professional Team: Itamar Hammerman, Dr. Elad Yaron, and Yonatan Ofrat. 
Loophole presents diverse works from the “Window of Creative Opportunity” program held at HaMiffal in recent months. The program, open to all, is a creative collaborative effort allowing anyone to participate in the design of the HaMiffal space as a dynamic collective Jerusalemite work of art.

Bible Lands Museum

Address: Shmuel Stephan Weiz St 21

Wednesday 13.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Doe of Dawn

Curator

Rachel Verliebter

Artists

Maya Zack, Yifat Bezalel, Alana Ruben Free, Sandra Valabregue, Iris Ahuva Pykovski, Giordana Musani, Méïr Srebriansky

The Doe of Dawn engages with the mystery of the doe, a biblical myth about the Divine Feminine. It gives rise to manifold meanings in the Kabbalah throughout the generations, interweaving love, birth, nature, deliverance, and longing for God. The Sages compare the doe to the Shekhinah: “the most selflessly devoted among the animals who has great mercy for her children,” who every night, gives birth to the dawn anew.

The myth depicts the fateful encounter of the doe representing purity, grace, divine beauty, and nourishment—with the snake, that creature representing the forces of evil, but also, masculinity and  healing. From this union of opposites,  delivered  in pain, redemption is born.

In the wake of October 7, heavy mourning surrounds Mother Zion, who is weeping for her children. 

Some of the artworks on display bear witness to the brutal negation of everything the doe stands for, while concomitantly conjuring up the procreative force of life and its continuity. Through the image of the doe, symbolizing the feminine resilience of Israel, the exhibit raises the crucial question burning within us right now: How can there be rebirth after such a deeply inflicted wound to the collective womb? How can we restore a sense of Malchut—feminine majesty—to our broken selves?

Heichal Shlomo Cultural Center

Opening Events

Address: King George St. 58

Saturday 16.03.2024 at 20:15

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Jewish on Paper

Curator: Hillel Smith

Artists: Dov Abramson, Avrum Ashery, Ezra Baderman, Elhanan Ben Uri, Heather Bronson, Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik, Jessica Tamar Deutsch, Shimon Engel, Yuval Gazuli, Rinat Gilboa, David Goldstein, Zan Goodman, Eitan Gutenmacher, Yehoshua Hooper, Rachel Jackson (with Jackson Mercer), Anshie Kagan, Chaya Mushka Kanner, Eli Kaplan Wildmann, Shana Koppel, Elad Lifshitz, Steve Marcus, David Moss, Yitzchok Moully, Dorielle Parker, Christopher Orev Reiger, Breini Rosenbloom, Eliav Sa’adia, Chaya Ita Singer, Lizzie Sivitz, Hillel Smith, Jay Smith, Eleyor Snir, Annita Soble, Emily Theodore, Suzy Ultman, Heather Vidmar-McEwen, Sandy Weberman, Menachem Weinreb, Ofer Winter, Mike Wirth, Alex Woz, Neriya Zur

Printed posters have been the most accessible form of visual media since their introduction in the West nearly six centuries ago. 

Contemporary posters featuring Jewish texts, holidays, and rituals bring Jewish content to the fore in ways that feel rooted in both Jewish tradition and modern society.

These everyday products that we use to decorate our lives—the drawings we hang on our walls, the cards we send to friends, the jokes we share, and the posts and memes we like—speak deeply about what we think matters.

A Palace in Time :Contemporary Religious Buildings Facing Jewish History

Curator: Dr. Arch. Naomi Simhony

Artists OMA New York / Shohei Shigematsu, Manuel Herz Architects; Switzerland, Wandel Hoefer Lorch and Hirsch Architects; Germany, Safdie Architects; Jerusalem / Singapore / Boston / Shanghai, Uri Padan Architects; Tel Aviv-Yafo, Dana Arieli; Jerusalem, Amir Tomashov; Afula, Dor Zlekha Levy; Tel Aviv-Yafo

The first ever architecture exhibition at the Jerusalem Biennale documents a trend of returning to history and heritage in the design of contemporary religious Jewish buildings around the world. The projects highlight different layers of the Jewish past, and signify their importance in shaping Jewish architectural identity. The exhibition examines the material consequences that the destruction of Jewish monuments during Kristallnacht and World War II had in shaping the Jewish architectural styles that followed. 

The design of Jewish religious buildings in the postbellum period was characterized by the adoption of generic modern exteriors, untethered to any particular tradition. Now, at the turn of the twenty-first century, a new architectural form is developing, characterized by direct engagement with Jewish historical heritage, reframed in contemporary style. 

Alongside the projects, works by three Israeli artists are presented, dealing with related themes including authenticity, trauma, and memory in their broad contexts.

Hallelujah

Curator: Udi Urman

Artists: Noa Charuvi, Hirut Yosef , Yehudit Feinstein, Yuli Aloni Primor, Gal Cohen, Ken Goshen, Gabriela Vainsencher, Maya Baran, Udi Urman

Hallelujah showcases Israeli artists who work and live in New York and seek to explore their own cultural heritage. As immigrants to the United States, these artists found different ways of integrating their longings, fears, and memories into their work. The exhibition underscores the unique ways in which artists can transform individual experiences into resonant and universal truths related to belonging. 

Hallelujah is a collaboration between The Jerusalem Biennale and the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. 

Tzimtzum

Curators: Eitan Gutenmacher, Lindsay Leboyer, Daniella Messer

Artists Ken Goshen, Tzvi Hecht, Jacqueline Kott-Wolle, Jackson Krule, Hana Mendel, Hannah Eve Rothbard, Annita Soble

Tzimtzum is a multimedia group exhibition presented by Havurah, a Jewish art collective founded in 2022 in New York City. Taking its title from a Kabbalistic metaphor for creation, Tzimtzum explores the artistic potential of divine concealment. The seven participating artists use their work as a “kli,” Hebrew for vessel or tool, to draw out the spiritual dimensions of commonplace diaspora scenes. Featuring new and recent works of painting, sculpture, illustration and photography, Tzimtzum offers a window into one of North America’s few artist communities built explicitly by and for Jews.

Mix and Match: Contemporary Dialogues with Yente’s Works
Curators: Tamara Kohn, Florencia Magaril, and Paloma Braverman

Artists: Yente (Eugenia Crenovich) Sofia Ungar Lucía Harari Lucas Jalowski Sara Goldman Karina Kipershmit

Mix and Match: Contemporary Dialogues with Yente’s Works suggests a visual dialogue between Yente’s cultural legacy and new generations of contemporary Argentine artists. 

For the first time, we have juxtaposed Yente’s original Jewish oeuvre with the works of contemporary artists, who, inspired by one of the mothers of the Argentine avant-garde, explore their own Jewish and artistic experience. 

Yente worked with various media, from painting to sculpture, and with different techniques, from figurative to abstract. The artists selected for this exhibition, similarly, bring diverse artistic languages and materials to their investigations of the legacy of an artist so important to the history of Argentine and Jewish art.

Kol HaOt

Opening Events

Address: Artists Colony

Friday 15.03.2024 at 11:30

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

The Song of Seeds

Curators:  Carson Wos & Anne-Marie Helwaser

Artist:  Brian Michael Reed

Kol HaOt is pleased to host American artist Brian Michael Reed for a collaborative artist-in-residence program that exhibits the artist’s multimedia project, The Song of Seeds. Inspired during a pilgrimage on foot from the Old Port of Jaffa (נמל יפו) to the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem (שער יפו), Reed memorializes the connection between the native landscape along his journey and centuries of spiritual practice by focusing on the pomegranate.

Through his unique practice of pictorial anthropology, Reed crafted glass pomegranate seeds that range in size and color. Kol HaOt’s Co-Founder and Executive Director Elyssa Moss Rabinowitz collaborated with Reed to infuse spiritual significance and cultural relevance by embedding religious themes and texts into his work. Kol HaOt’s emphasis on educational and community outreach augments Reed’s desire to enhance the spiritual nature of his work through healing and reflective dialogue. Pomegranate seeds, a bridge between the natural world and religious practices, are a common symbol of righteousness, their innumerous seeds emulating the copious good deeds one can perform.

Reed invites the audience to interact with his glass pomegranate seeds and reflect on righteousness and beauty amidst the darkness by meaningfully arranging them within acrylics and styrofoam. Dreaming of pomegranates, according to the Talmud, is a sign of impending abundance, that one will soon flourish (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Brachot 57). Reed expects that just as he found meaning in the pomegranate trees punctuating his journey from the Mediterranean coast to the holy city of Jerusalem, his audience will resonate with his work as a symbol of hope, progress, and triumph.

As the People of Israel wandered in the desert, they lamented their time in slavery and reminisced about having enough food, specifically mentioning their yearning for pomegranates (Numbers 20:5). As their lack of pomegranates symbolized their suffering, Reed’s pomegranate seeds urge the viewer to reflect and question: How can we repair what is broken and emerge from a period of despair, both on individual and societal levels? Amidst the turmoil and tragedy of war, Reed’s pomegranate seeds and their eternal message of righteousness, hope, and transformation are relevant and provocative, encouraging reflection, appreciation, and healing.

Between the Lines: Questions, Responsa, and the Space Between 

Curator: Hila Zeira Weinstein

Artists: Orna Hazor, Yigal Yossian, Yehudit Shlomo, Yarel Yair, Lior Maayan, Michal Greenboim, Mati Lang, Ruth Eliav, Rena Bannett, Shachar-Mario Mordechai, Shlomo Blazer, Sara Malul, Tchelet Miriam Zohar 

Between the Lines brings together works of a collaborative journey of shared learning and independent creation. A group of artists in diverse fields joined to study selected texts from the Halakhic responsa: a vast and rich literature that offers a glimpse into the lives of the Jews in Israel and the Diaspora over a period of thousands of years; an inalienable asset of historical Jewish law and culture.

The works are influenced by the responsa examined in the group, with each artist connecting to a question or element that touched him or her. The works deal with timeless issues of trust, relationships, marriage, women’s rights, purity and sanctity,  the spirit of the Sabbath, and the spirit and sanctity of man and of the land. The artists examine the issues through different techniques and from diverse points of view, renewing ancient explorations of the meeting place between the Halakhic and human worlds, bridging the distant and ancient with the here and now.

The learning and creation took place within the framework of a collaboration between Schocken Institute for Jewish Research’s Responsa and Renewal fellowship program and Kol HaOt, an organization for Judaism and art in Hutzot HaYotzer Artists’ Colony in Jerusalem..

Koresh 14 Gallery

Opening Events

Address: Koresh St 14

Friday 15.03.2024 at 12:30

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Activate: A New York Women’s Perspective

Curator:

Hadas Glazer

Artists:

Siona Benjamin, Goldie Gross, Ronit Levin Delgado, Joan Roth, Chelsea Steinberg Gay, Yona Verwer

The Jewish Art Salon’s exhibition, Activate: A New York Women’s Perspective, features the work of six artists whose divergent art practices investigate the complexities of life as women today. 

Exploring physical and political power, the show centers systemic, holistic, and female-driven change. The artists explore unique expressions of feminine power amidst fraught socio-political dynamics related to bodies and heritage, intimacy and otherness, sex and religion. From documentation to performance, the artworks both depict and embody female activism.

Through Jewish feminine symbols such as Lilith, Women of the Wall, the Statue of Liberty, and themes including Tikkun Olam, Kol Isha, and others, the artists create an eclectic mixed-media collection sensitively addressing intergenerational memory, injustice, courage, and survival.

The artists hail from free-spirited, dynamic New York; their vibrant, thought-provoking pieces question social norms, inviting viewers to join a political rebellion powered by a distinctly female force.

Beita Gallery

Opening Event:

Address: Jaffa St. 155

Monday 11.03.2024 at 18:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

A Boomerang on Breath-Routes

Curator: Shira Friedman

Artist: Shy Abady

In A Boomerang on Breath-Routes, titled after the opening line of Paul Celan’s poem, Shy Abady revisits personalities, landscapes, and objects that he has engaged with in the past, presented here as witnesses to what is happening in Israel during Autumn 2023. 

Alongside images of famous philosophers and literary giants Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan, and Yaakov Shabtai, whose life stories were complex and tragic, are  depicted the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, the tomb of a Sheikh/Tzaddik, a water tower, and Washingtonia Robusta and Cypress trees, all highly symbolic to this narrative of impending catastrophe.

The immense contribution of these figures to literature and ethics is invoked here as a kind of ominous warning; all of them have given voice to the fragility of human institutions and collective memory, issuing a moral exhortation to grapple with the past. Abady and his heroes are not calm: they remind us, as in Celan’s poem, to “stand still for a heartbeat once in a thousand years,” as catastrophe, unexamined, always returns, “as a boomerang.”

The works are drawn and burned on OSB panels, and are characterized by a bright background and a red line that seems to be continuous and connecting  between them. It is interesting to think about Abady’s charred, burnt, and beautiful works in context of what Benjamin wrote in his essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," where he warns against the inclination to see disasters as purely aesthetic events, disconnected from their political and ethical echoes—a possibility that threatens to dull our consciousness to the real horrors that were part of these events.

The Old Sha’arei Tzedek

Opening Event

Address: Jaffa St 161

Sunday 17.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

A Very Narrow Bridge

Curator: Fiammetta Martegani

Artists: Anissa Ashkar, Michael Ben Abu, Amos Biderman, Raya Bruckenthal, Tsibi Geva, Leor Grady, Kazuo Ishi, Liron Lavi Turkeinch, Dede & Nitzan, Haim Maor, Lenore Misrachi Cohen, Karam Natour, Israel Rabinovich, Khader Oshah, Ruth Noam Segal

"The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid."

-Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

Each of the artists in this exhibition has faced significant challenges, often due to their origin. They are Jews and Muslims, men and women, gay and straight, religious and agnostic, and represent the multicultural faces of Israel today. 

In expressing their individual voices in their native languages, Arabic, Hebrew, and Yiddish, they explore how the diverse languages and identities of Israel can help mitigate fear, and create a bridge between cultures, religions, and identities.

Al'amthal

Curator: Fiammetta Martegani

Artist: Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen

Al’amthal are Judeo-Arabic proverbs used by Syrian Jews before their community’s uprooting in the last century. Discovered by the artist on her family bookshelf, Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen has revisited them throughout her career.

Here, she celebrates them in their purest form, with the discipline of Arabic calligraphy itself. There is a Mattal, or phrase, for every situation. Captivating for their timeless quality and enduring witticism, the works reconnect us to a magnificent heritage through both language and art. 

By recording these phrases in her own way, Lenore ensures that they are never forgotten.

Dignified Belongings

Curator: Dr. Orna Segal

Artists: Matti Fischer, Shaked Aviv, Avner Bar Chama, Orly Azran, Michael Kokolevich, Hila Karabelnikov Paz, Sigalit Frid, Orit Koren Aharony, Efrat Shani, Kollet Ziv

The Talpiot College artists' exhibition Dignified Belongings deals with abstract conceptual baggage such as dignity and private property. 

The Hebrew word 'כבודה' can be read as “belongings,” or “property,” meaning a load carried voluntarily or forcibly, corresponding to the properties of inalienable assets. 

It can also be read as, “her dignity,” which is considered a convention, its boundaries defined by society, or reformulated and reinforced by the woman herself. 

Dignity and property are both expressed in ideas and values that create balance and sharpen identity, yet sometimes they weigh heavily and constitute a burden. The artists examine these concepts in Jewish, artistic, cultural, and gender-oriented aspects.

Fallen Chandelier

Artist: Jane Labaton 

The huge Chandelier, in it’s fallen grace and hinting of past grandeur, symbolizes a collapsing and unstable world.

A light cut off from it’s source, a lack of order and balance; it unsettles the firm foundation of our reality. 

The work is composed of thousands and thousands of moths, some whole, others only partially formed; all creatures that have metamorphosed out of a secure and protective cocoon into a cruel and treacherous world.

Stretch Out the Earth

Curator: Sophie Berzon MacKie

Artist: Noga Greenberg

The exhibition is a new interpretation of a body of Noga Greenberg’s work that was shown at the Be’eri Gallery in November 2021. 

Consisting of images shot with a 35 mm film camera and 9*6 slides, it deals with interior scenes of home and motherhood; those points of contact between spiritual, emotional, and national spaces, and the processes that unfold therein. 

These are places yearning for something higher, reaching for the ever beyond, even as they allow for intimacy, itself mirroring an overflowing desire for infinity.

Images of beds and houses transformed into white clouds, bold stains of color created by destruction of the film, landscapes, real or imagined: all share the discernible presence of a horizon that separates the sacred and profane, a boundary between within and without.

Museum on the Seam

Opening Events

Address: Kheil ha-Handasa St. 4

Thursday 14.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Orayta: From Content to Form

Curator: David Sperber

Artists: Helène Aylon, Arie Aroch, Adi Drimer, Avraham Eilat, Ofra Erel, Andi Arnovitz, Netanel Bollag, Raya Bruckenthal, Nechama Golan, Jack Jano, Yael Kanarek, Roo Cohen Eilam, Raffi Lavie, Eti Levi, Michal Na’aman, Nona Orbach, Israel Rabinovitz, Dafna Shalom, Joseph Sassoon Semah, Michael Sgan Cohen, Arik Weiss, Drora Weitzman

Contemporary artists use sacred texts as raw materials in their works. They choose to engage with the materiality of the text itself by copying, overlaying, stamping and blurring it. These works emphasize the value of the sacred text itself through its materiality, which tradition treats as sacred beyond its content. The evolution from focusing on the meaning of the text to examining its materiality and structure is one of the prominent elements in contemporary Jewish art. The shift from narrative to form and from semantics to the physicality of texts crystallizes into works that can be understood as traces of an action in which the materiality of the text and the idea of embedded holiness is the content of the work. Once the text has been severed from its textuality, its materiality, previously unremarkable, is discovered. Orayta examines various incarnations of this trend and suggests understanding it as a new kind of Torah study.

Rebel Women from the Apocrypha

Curator: Dr. Shir Aloni Yaari

Artist:  Marcelle Hanselaar

What captivated Marcelle Hanselaar’s imagination was the fierce independence of her characters: Eve, Judith, Jezebel, Delilah, Lilith, and others.

Having been exposed to what she describes as their feisty and even subversive personalities in various artistic and cultural representations, the Jewish women she shows in Rebel Women from the Apocrypha are all rebelling against a deep-seated patriarchal order that is far from dead.

The fifteen stories chosen by Hanselaar as the catalyst for her new series have their origin in the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition, but she does not come to them from a faith background. And the artist does not argue that these rebellious women are all ‘good’ heroines, nor that they are always just and vindicable as victims-turned-avengers.

In the artist’s vivid portrayals they are all, however, brazenly, “on top”: commanding their own sexuality, agency, position, and plot. Through a forceful blend of expressive characterisation, dark humor, and idiosyncratic style that draws inspiration from such print masters and storytellers as Francisco Goya and Paula Rego, Hanselaar presents us with a fresh take on these age-old myths that both describes the engrained vilification and demonization of women in Western culture, and defiantly reclaims their unruly power. 

Hanselaar defines the word apocrypha broadly, adding her own ideas as an interpreter rather than as an illustrator of the biblical scenes in order to bring these stories to life for a 21st century audience.  

Bingyi: Emei Mountains 

Curator: Leeza Ahmady

Artist:  Bingyi

Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts (FSA) presents a large scroll painting and performance video by renowned Beijing and Los Angeles-based artist Bingyi, created in 2018 at sacred Buddhist mountain sites in China as a land and weather project entitled Emei Mountains.

Bingyi’s multifaceted practice spans ink, environmental, and performance art, as well as site-specific architectural installation; she  draws inspiration from traditional Chinese Shan Shui landscape painting and ancient Daoist philosophy, and adopts a non-anthropocentric perspective to channel nature's creative agency.

 The inspiration for this work, also called the "Weeping Mountains and Rivers" series, originated in a transcendental experience Bingyi had in 2009 while visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Beit Ori Tzvi

Opening Events

Address: 34 Jaffa St.

Wednesday 20.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Midtones

Curator: Elhai Salomon

Artist: Ofir Segal

Ofir Segal’s first solo exhibition traces lines of light and twilight, between answers and questions, between the kibbutz and the city and the ultra-orthodox world. His symbolic and heroic journey is, above all, an intimate one without bias. The great mythological representational objects in the world of the Jew and the Israeli are, in this journey, forms living, growing, and inanimate: They garner alienation, recognition, and a reunion with their silent presence, as these days of war sharpen or blur their contours, imbuing them with layers of new meanings.

Black Box Street Gallery

Opening Event:

Address: Jaffa St. 97

Monday 11.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Just Women: A World of Tradition and Change

Curators: Asaf Cohen, Izek Mizrahi

Artist: Joan Roth

Joan Roth has unveiled generations of unseen Jewish women. From Ethiopia to Bukhara, Ukraine to Yemen, India, Morocco, the USA and Israel, these women often existed in the untold and unknown shadows. 

This exhibit, Just Women: A World of Tradition and Change, brings to life a mosaic of diverse Jewish women who have become the bedrock of today’s Israel. The viewer is allowed a glimpse into homes, into workplaces, into lives. Joan has captured Hallah baking, army service, performances, candle lighting, and more.  

Roth’s travels to the lost Jewish diaspora has brought these women to life for the world to see.

The Van Leer Institute

Opening Events

Address: Jabotinsky St. 43

Tuesday 19.03.2024 at 18:00

Closing Date: Friday 19.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Seek My Face

Curator: Giorgia Calo

Artists Etti Abergel, Yifat Bezalel, Veronica Botticelli, Alice Cattaneo, Silvia Giambrone, Loredana Longo, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Alice Schivardi, Khen Shish, Tomaso Binga

Seek My Face features the works of Italian and Israeli artists from different generations. The exhibition’s title quotes a phrase from King David's Psalm 27.

Ten female artists come together to share personal and political thoughts; their artistic expressions often characterized by a potent sense of transgression and disturbance. 

Through paintings, sculptures, installations, performances, and videos, the exhibition showcases an adeptness of female creativity in making use of diverse media and techniques to communicate messages.

The exhibition is an invitation to look beyond the work, analyzing the representation of the Self; an invitation to explore the multiple facets of art and creativity, and a reflection on the human desire for connection, discovery, and transcendence.

The Seventeen: Iron Flock

Curator: Samantha Baskind, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University

Artist: Archie Rand

Archie Rand debuts his new series, The Seventeen: Iron Flock. Among the women featured in the loosely painted, electrically charged canvases are the well recognized, such as Sarah and Judith, and the lesser known, such as Asenath and Rahab. 

The exhibition is a continuation of Rand’s forty-year artistic enterprise, exploring the Bible and Jewish texts in serialized paintings conceptually informed by twentieth-century culture. 

His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, among many others.

Dress Code

Curator:  Avishay Wohl

Artist: Michal Rejwan

Dress Code by Michal Rejwan expresses the meaning of clothing and garments in different cultures. The exhibition presents seven large oil paintings, each of which shows men in dresses.

Michal Rejwan’s paintings were inspired and created against the background of modern life in Jerusalem, informed by the illustrious tradition of classical art. Her paintings discuss the nature of ideas and their changing weight in our lives; she demonstrates how ideas, materials, and techniques can be mixed to create new perspectives. 

Out of her great love for natural colors and raw materials, Michal has created a unique chromatic intensity expressive of tradition and renewal.

Nof-Nof-Nof: Landscape in Contemporary Israeli Painting

Tov veYafe Beit Midrash for Art and Design

Curators: Nechemia Boaz and Victor Ryabchin

Artists: Shaul Shats, Oded Feingersh, Gideon Holland, Silvia Bar-Am, Meir Appelfeld, Yona Levi Grossman, Arnon Kaplan, Yosef Yosade, Michael Morgenshtern, Aviya, Avigail Fried, Nechemia Boaz, Ilan Baruch, Dalia Katav Arieli, Julia Shulman, Tirza Freund, Alex Kremer, Leonid Balaklav, Aviva Blum, Michael Yakhilevich, Pnina Frank, Ofer Lellouche, Marek Yannai

Stepping out of the studio and into a natural landscape is a foundational act in the painting tradition and in the learning process. From the beginning of Zionism to the early years of the State of Israel, Israeli landscape painting was a popular genre and treated to a rich diversity of expression by leading Israeli artists. 

Over the years, landscape painting became neglected and marginal in the artistic mainstream. However, even when Israeli artists did not deal with it directly, the landscape was still a formal or expressive point of departure.

Israeli artists’ engagement with their landscape highlights the deep connection between the people of Israel and their land. This special bond is even described in the words of the biblical prophets as a marriage between husband and wife.

In this exhibition, we are excited to give renewed and comprehensive expression to landscape painting through the works of Israeli artists from different generations and different schools of thought.

The Jerusalem Theatre

Opening Events

Address: David Marcus St. 20

Monday 18.03.2024 at 20:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Derekh Eretz: Between Yavne, Zippori, and Jerusalem 

Curator  Liora Levi, Roni Reuven

Artists Rachel Aharon, Yair Garbuz, Jack Jano, Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov, Aharon Kritzer, Arie Lamdan, Liora Levi, Vered Linenberg, Sigal Maor, Gila Miller, Israel Rabinovitz, Hedva Reuven, Roni Reuven, Deborah Spinner, Drora Vaizman, Sharon Webber-Zvik, Doron Zeevi

The Hebrew term Derech Eretz can be translated in two ways. Literally, it denotes a physical path connecting two or more places. It is also used to describe Jewish values, indicating a set of norms and behaviors that enable coexistence, connection, and community.

In this exhibition, the artists have chosen to give multidimensional expression to the ways man chooses to walk in the world, to the literal and figurative ways the Sages of the Mishnah use this phrase, and to the places in the soul and in the world in which one may wander. The exhibition itself has traveled to galleries in Yavne, Hoshe’a, and Zippori, and now, to Jerusalem.

Using drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and printmaking, the artists show that the ways we treat each other are our inalienable assets, the connective elements that can repair a polarized and fractured Israeli society.

From Thee To Thyself I Shall Flee

Curator Dr. Batsheva Ida

Artist Yedidya Ish Shalom 

From Thee To Thyself I Shall Flee shines a special light on the street corners and old neighborhoods of the rapidly changing Hebrew city. The exhibition presents this accelerated gentrification process via sensitive and colorful realistic paintings.

Residents are moving out, and the skyscrapers taking over the horizon are conducting a charged dialogue with the simple old houses of the city. If not selected for preservation, they will soon  be demolished. Against the backdrop of the new towers, yesterday’s buildings are seen emblazoned with graffiti tags through which the artist corresponds in an implied critical manner with the current local social reality. 

Yedidya Ish Shalom is an artist, painter, and designer whose paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in Israel and around the world. He was born and raised in Jerusalem and studied at the Israel Museum's Triptychon program and with various artists along the way. He graduated with honors from the faculty of design at Holon Institute of Technology and lives and works in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. The exhibition is supported by The Jerusalem Foundation.

Galley Rashuta-Beit Rashut Ha’Rabim

Opening Event:

Address: Aharon Rabinovich St. 33

Wednesday 13.3.2024 at 20:30

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Green the Abyss Below Me

Curator

Jenny Aharon

Artists

Shoshana Givon, Yael Ben Shalom, Natasha Shakhnes, Ortal Reuveny, Yifat Loev Ganuz, Shachar Levi, Tohar Mor

"Sometimes the heart intends to break. There is no lesson for this holiness. How the skin wraps the flesh, how the air surrounds the earth and how, beyond the air, the bodies of the great ones drift away, without a sound, into the darkness" (Yoel Hoffman, Fragment 73, The Christ of Fish)

What do you hear when you put your ear to the heart of the abyss? In the enigma of the abyss lies the whole scope of existence. It has a strong life that forms in the presence of death.

In the world after collapse, time and space are changing. Time becomes dense, satiated, the space comes out of the wound and returns to him in a circle. But the abysmal quality adds to contain and sustain everything within it: , the wheel of day and night moves to add, to create the rich texture that lives in it. Between light to darkness, between air to earth, between photosynthesis to absorption and the wind that floats on the waters surface.

The body of work in front of you wants to give room for noise the frequent, rich life that arises within the fracture. Inside the wound, the healthy tissue is already forming, Dead and living cells are placed side by side, used in amalgamation. If it was possible to put a finger and follow me describing the movement of the seas, the finger would draw a circular spiral, descending and ascending alternately, carving in the flesh of the world, hurting and healing at the same time.

From wandering among the works of the exhibition, the understanding likens that everything is caught up in this movement. In the heart of the empty abyss a wide range of mediums, languages, contexts, raw materials and images, all of which stand up to the tension the fundamental between what is no longer and what is just beginning to form:

In the encounter with the bare skin after jewels being torn from it, or from the wounded face-like trunks of the ancient olive trees. Out of the raw wild animal that was captured for a moment in registration, or from the process of their slow, constant formation, of the stalactite caves. A wounded land and a heart beating with blood alongside a greenish revival, A reclining woman looking inward and an eternal desert landscape.

The works all conduct the intense voltage electricity in-between death and the emanation of life that decays and sprouts and decays and revives.

Gallery 'Rashuta'- contemporary art in Reshut HaRabim. The new gallery for the Reshut HaRabim opened its gates in the summer of '23 and grew out of the extensive activity of Beit Asher that is home to about 40 Jerusalem associations to Israeli culture and Judaism. The spaces of the 'Rashuta' gallery where the works are displayed are active and vibrant spaces that reveal our body of work to many visitors. The gallery hosts female artists from Jerusalem and all throughout the country and emerges as a connecting agent between its regions of cultural, artistic and human aspects of Jerusalem. As a body operating out of Rashut HaRabim, the 'Rashota' gallery promotes art and culture as an awareness agency, change and nowadays even as a personal trauma rehabilitation agency and the collective.

The exhibition hall - Beit Reshut HaRabim is a Brutalist building, which was founded in the 60s by the same creator of Architects of the Jerusalem Theater and the National Library. The house was built as a reception center for new immigrants in the Kiryat HaYovel neighborhood the 'peripheral' tributary which gathered Jews to it from different continents. The center has been a cultural gathering place from the beginning and has continued over the past six decades.

Gallery curator: Yeni Aharon

CEO of the Public Authority: Einbar Bluzer Shalem

Skizza Gallery

Opening Event:

Address: Koresh St. 8

Thursday 21.03.2024 at 19:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Desert's Call

Curator

Marina Schelest

Artists

Shlomo Bronstein, Sasha Dashevsky, Aleksandr Gorynin, Yona Levy Grosman, Shmuel Schelest

Desert's Call offers a contemporary look at the desert as an inalienable asset to the local consciousness. The desert has a deep connection with the Israeli collective memory.

A number of works deal with contemporary artistic interpretations of the Book of Numbers, the story of the Israelites’ wanderings in the desert on their way to the Holy Land. Others examine life as an experience of settling the desert, as a space and as a mental process.

The exhibition is presented in a full circle, emphasizing the subject's multidimensionality. It represents a physical and spatial demand for a fresh perspective, shows Israeli cultural and historical assets in a new light, and calls for innovative solutions to the burning questions of Israeli reality.

The Jerusalem House of Quality

Opening Event:

Address: Hebron Rd. 12

Friday 15.03.2024 at 10:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

On Our Journey Home

Curator

Galit Zimbalist

Artist

Michal Greenboim

Michal Greenboim’s solo exhibition emerges from her personal history, weaving together generations. This is the story of her family, her partner, children and grandchildren, parents, and grandparents.

Her grandmother, Doctor Rachel Freund trained in philosophy, but realized on her arrival in the early 20th century that the Land of Israel needs farmers, not intellectuals. She started a farm while developing the local educational system.

Through this century-long narrative, Michal exposes her heart’s secrets, her personal story, and the ways dialogic memory communicates with both personal family history and universal truths of human nature.

President Hotel

Opening Events

Address: Ahad Ha’Am 3

Wednesday 20.03.2024 (time will be announced soon)

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Art and Nomads: Multiple Horizons 

Curators: Nataliya Kamenetskaya, Galina Bleikh, Jungsuk Noh

Artists

Republic of Korea: Jungsuk Noh, Leenam Lee, Woosong Bang, S&KOMUST, Changho Kim

Mongolia: Solongo Tseekhuu

Belgium: Alexandra Dementieva, Yvonne De Grazia

France: Pierre Guérin

USA: Anna Frants, Irina Danilova

Israel: Nataliya Kamenetskaya, Galina Bleikh, Nadia Adine Rose, Semyon Agroskin, Lilia Chak, Michael Yakhilevich

Nomadism is more than just a lifestyle choice; it has profound implications for contemporary society and art. Our project was conceived as part of a broader initiative to promote understanding between different nationalities. 

Individuals from the six participating countries — Israel, the Republic of Korea, Belgium, France, Mongolia, and the USA — have embarked on journeys to unknown horizons on different continents. As nomadic artists, we suspected that beyond the visible horizon lay others, shining in reflection or the imagination. These themes are manifested in our artworks, especially during this eventful historical period.

Engel Gallery

Opening Event:

Address: Shlomzion HaMalka St. 13

Opening: March 20, 6:00pm

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Iron Flock & Assets

Curator

Gavriel Engel

Artists

Menashe Kadishman, Mordechai Ardon, Avigdor Arikha, Yosl Bergner, Nahum Gutman, Anna Ticho, Marcel Janco, Abel Pann, Reuven Rubin, Jacob Steinhardt, Yehezkel Steichman, Igael Tumarkin & more.

Iron Flock & Assets deals with the inalienable assets of Israeli art as well as the inalienable assets of Jerusalem’s Engel Gallery.

The exhibition is divided into two floors. At the entrance to the gallery, Menashe Kadishman's famous sheep sculptures are scattered across the space like a grazing flock, with the image of the shepherdess in the center, keeping watch. The second floor showcases Israeli art masterpieces throughout the ages from the gallery's collection.

These artworks exemplify the particular uniqueness of the gallery to Jerusalem, and to the Israeli art scene as a whole. Among the exhibited artwork: Nimrod by Abel Pann (1920's), The War of Independence by Avigdor Arikah (1948), Bird by Mordechai Ardon (1947), Interior with the Chair & Table by Arie Aroch (1938) and more.

Agripas 12

Opening Events

Address: Agripas 12

Monday 11.03.2024 at 20:00

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

Scarlet Thread

Curator

Dveer Shaked

Artists

Doron Adar, Yoram Blumnkranz, Oded Zaidel, Ariane Littman, Rita Mendes-Flohr, Rina Peled, Bitya Rosenak, Miri Tlalim Strauss, Pnina Shalvi, Parvin Schmueli Buchnik, Ruth Schreiber

Exhibition Description (soon to announced)