AIR 1 - ARTISTS IN RESIDENCY

The exhibition presents works by ten young artists who stayed in the Givat Haviva AIR joint residency program, led by the Shared Art Center. For three months, they lived together and shared a common studio space, as they got to know the place, the area, the environment and the people.

 

The works in the exhibition are completely individual, but, at the same time, they share a common vision of the current reality and the existential complexity it reflects. Such a joint exhibition, perhaps especially these days, can act as a kind of mediator for that complexity of life, as it shares the personal questions that preoccupy the artists. These are questions about togetherness, difference, belonging, uniqueness and meaning; as well as pain, and, of course, about identity.

 

Perhaps it can provoke a critical observation on the current discourse in the world; about the multitude of realities that exist today simultaneously and sometimes separately, to a point where it sometimes seems that they do not share even one common reference point. Is there a possibility for an honest encounter, where it is possible to maintain both the most individual identity and uniqueness and also to act and be together?  The group of young artists knew how to respect every religion and every level of religiosity, every secularism and every form of secularism, every nationality and every language, while getting to know each oher as individuals and connecting as a group.

 

Reflecting on the residency, two things are clear to us: the artists treated each other according to each one's personal uniqueness, and they had a common point of reference: art.

This encouraged them to help each other in the production of the various projects and to learn from each other, all the time. This is how they explored additional, new, unfamiliar media. In a constant search process, they expanded the boundaries between the different media and discovered multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary ways of thinking and working.

 

Like any group, natural group processes took place here too, such as becoming acquainted, forming connections, learning communication methods, developing respectful group dialogue, and also disputes and crises. Here the language of listening has become a fundamental commitment, a condition for the success of the path. Significant concepts that arose both within the group itself and in the work processes, even if these do not appear in the final products, are personal and social boundaries, cultural codes and multiple identities.

 

The program mentors come from a variety of disciplines in the art field and are an inherent part of the program: Hannan Abu-Hussein, Farid Abu Shakra, Ron Amir, Asad Azi,  Adi Boutrous, Stav Struz Boutrous, Adina Bar On, Galia Bar Or, Tomer Heymann and Avner Singer. Each one of them breaks new ground in their field and in their own way. Their decision to take an essential part in the program reflects the great importance they find in young art that is searching for its way, as well as in the shared vision for the actual existence of a shared society.

 

The overall experience of the exhibition raises questions about the cultural and human content that our world is invested in (and about those issues it ignores) and examines the path of shared existence as an existential condition - a unique necessity in these times of social and political crisis.

 

After all, only if we embrace common decency (in Hebrew: derekh eretz, 'the path of the land'), a trivial concept in the past, which today seems to have to be relearned, will the path of this land be different. We can learn from the young artistic voice that thinks in different terms, of specificity and uniqueness on the one hand, and of global world culture, on the other.
                                                       Founders, directors and curators: Claudette Zorea & Anat Lidror