Through personal works that also deal with collective identity, the artists tell a story of an intimate experience within a shared, physical and emotional space; a space where light is not only a source of vision and exposure, but also a source of inner strength and a proposal for new interpretation. In a time of rupture and destruction, the exhibition offers a place of discovery and exploration. From the wild, a new language is created, and in the face of the other, a connecting thread, intuitive and human, is revealed. Wild light, that primordial light, the divine light that preceded the creation of the sun, the force of creation, is a light that reveals both beauty and human cruelty. The works in the exhibition express the tension between control and liberation, between known laws and uncontrollable forces.

 

The name "Wild Light" is a reference to the title of Yona Wallach's last book of poems, which was published by Echut in 1983. The themes of the collection are a look at the self, at experiences of mind and body, death, love, sanity, madness, and art. Wallach's poetry is colorful and theatrical. Like a director, she constructs characters and situations, strong versus weak characters, dominated and dominating; as if printed words are not enough for her poetry, it also demands a visual life.

Like Wallach's theater, the exhibition creates a stage for presenting the untamed inner world of the artists, in a time when reality is perceived as a theater of the absurd.

 

Roni takes us on a fishing trip, featuring bare-chested men catching fish, holding them and posing for the camera. The image spreads across the white paper, dripping to its borders, forming and unfolding, like a Polaroid photo that has stopped in the middle of being developed.  In Rotem's work, the light emerges from the exposure, illuminating the moment of encounter between two mechanisms of power, and creating a new meaning for it. The concrete monument sculpture, from which he removed the shape of the alarm siren, asks us to listen, draws us to it, as a reversal of its known role as transmitter.

 

Aisha brings the wild into the light, revealing and concealing from us a fascinating inner world of color, form, and material. She paints on broken furniture, laid on its side, like creatures torn from their natural habitat. The colors in Lama's paintings are an index to the depths of her memories, on which she draws her niece. On the floor are colorful paper sculptures, free from form and substance. Shira deals with the tension between the visible and the hidden when she presents a sculpture (torso) of a bare belly, the source of the world, from which emanates the muffled music of the drumming of a darbuka. In front of it she shows a large photograph of a white duvet that envelops and hides the person lying inside it, illuminated in the dark night.

 

Samer's wall score, like stars twinkling from within the tapestry, shines its light on a pile of dislodged ceramic tiles, placed one on top of the other like a totem.  Asalah presents a dialogue of consciousness, a three-way conversation about forgetting, repression, and acceptance. An image of white text on a black background displayed on three screens, reveals the forgotten within the dark matter around it.  Darya places two windows, one inside the space, and the other outside the gallery, in the sculpture garden. The window creates for the viewer a meeting point, where light and time pass, a meeting point between inside and outside, between open and closed, between image and text.

 

In Raghad's drawings, the image looks like an etched photograph, coming through the white frailly and delicately, without clear boundaries. The pencil lines tremble, as if a bird constructed the drawing with small twigs. Her sculptures also turned white and lost their color, as if they too had been burned by the strong sunlight.

 

On a green wooden classroom board, Odeya paints a magical, dark world. A life-size female portrait is painted on a folding wooden table, dozens of water whistles in the shape of angry birds, are scattered on the floor, like a curse.

 

              Harel Luz, exhibition curator

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Program Director: Anat Lidror

Artistic coach and curator: Harel Luz | Program coordinator: Orit Reingewertz

Mentors: Avner Singer, Galia Bar Or, Hanan Abu Hussein, Manar Zuabi, Nardeen Srouji, Adina Bar On, Ron Amir, Penny Yassour

Guest artists: Anisa Ashkar, Asad Azi, Karim Abu Shakra, Stav Struz Boutrous, Abed Abdi, Sari Golan, Tomer Heymann.