Metzer-Meiser: Take 2
1972 / 2025
Opening: November 15, 2025, 12:00
Artists: Micha Ullman,
Avital Geva, Tsibi Geva, Saher Miari, Marion Fuchs, Faten Abu Ali, Abed Elsalam
Sabia’, Peter Jacob Meltz, Asala Hassan, Dror Ben Naftaly
Interviews and video: Noa Karavan and Smadar Timor
Curators: Anat Lidror and Tali Tamir
Metzer-Meiser: Take 2 explores, resonates, and converses with the iconic
Metzer-Meiser project produced in October 1972 in the area between Kibbutz
Metzer and the village of Meiser, featuring installations that involved
exchanging soil, scattering books, burying objects, and privatizing fields. The
four original participants were: Avital Geva, Micha Ullman, Moshe Gershuni, and
Dov Or Ner. In Metzer-Meiser: Take 2, Ullman and Geva display works that
revisit the original event, alongside nine other artists who both revisit it
and create a statement of their own. Together with its retrospective view,
Metzer-Meiser: Take 2 looks towards the future, while shaping an understanding
of the different narratives that emerged regarding a single artistic event.
The
Givat Haviva Art Gallery, under the gallery’s curator Anat Lidror and
independent curator Tali Tamir, have initiated an action and exhibition that
will explore, debate, and allude to the iconic Metzer-Meiser project held in
1972 at Metzer-Meiser and the intervening land, from a 53-year perspective. In
the historiography of Israeli art, the original project was considered the
first artistic endeavor to take place in a joint Jewish-Arab space, though the
four artists who initiated and implemented it were Jews. This project marked
the initiation of conceptual art in Israel and embodied a new language that
involved linking art and life, action in space, and environmental-geo-political
and social consciousness. At the same time, it was inspired by the kibbutz
environment within Israel’s geographical periphery, shared as it is with
Palestinian-Arab towns; a project born in Ein Shemer, substantiated in Metzer,
and drawing from the kibbutz ideology of co-existence between the two nations.
Micha
Ullman executed an operation
that received wide exposure and became emblematic of the project: exchanging soil
between Kibbutz Metzer and the adjacent Arab village of Meiser, by digging two
pits and switching the earth within them. The pits were dug by young boys from
the kibbutz and the village. At the Metzer-Meiser junction, Avital Geva
scattered books rejected by the Amnir paper recycling facility in Hadera and
invited residents of the two towns to come and pick up books. Dov Or Ner
issued an appeal to the residents of Metzer and Meiser in Hebrew and Arabic,
seeking personal objects that were not in use, which he then buried together in
a shaft dug in the earth, as an archeological deposit to be uncovered in the
future. Moshe Gershuni parcellated (designated plots) in the fields of
Metzer, granting each family in the kibbutz its own share of land, a prophetic
act that anticipated the privatization process in the kibbutzim decades later and
aroused resistance and anger within the kibbutz.
Metzer-Meiser:
Take 2 takes place at a charged
historical moment for Jewish-Arab relations in the country and in the region;
it includes references to the current quandaries. Although Gershuni and Or Ner
are no longer with us, Micha Ullman and Avital Geva will display works that
correspond with those in the original project and with the country’s current circumstances:
Ullman dug two chair-shaped pits, placing the heaps of sand extracted within
the gallery; Avital Geva presents “Books drowned in a swamp” – books embedded in
a concrete floor (displayed outside), as well as “The Jewish library” within
the gallery – a concrete-sealed bookcase, reflecting the loss of fundamental
values affiliated with the Jewish ethos.
Metzer-Meiser: Take 2 examines the divergent
memories retained by members of Metzer and residents of Meiser regarding the
artistic event that took place in 1972, reveals the different narratives that emerged
regarding this event over the years, and explores the mutual bond between the
Jewish and Arab towns. Alluding to Ullman’s soil-based
work and Or Ner’s object burial, Saher Miari displays the content of the pits
and the objects within a transparent column. In another work he engages with the
art of sculptor Yechiel Shemi and displays “The cave”, from which the diggers’ conversing
voices emerge. Abed Elsalam Sabia’ displays a large-scale landscape painting overlooking
the joint area between Metzer and Meiser, flanked by a clothesline featuring
clothes he gathered from the two towns. Faten Abu Ali displays another version
of her efforts at botanical grafting of olive trees with other trees, as a
metaphor for mixing different species. Asala Hassan interviews young people
from Meiser on the connection they feel to their residential area and
translates select sentences into Morse code. Her work centers on the issue of
understanding / not understanding, distress and well-being.
Tsibi
Geva copies the dual Metzer-Meiser format to the biographical domain and inscribes[רק1] in the space
two names of personal friends – Yoav, Nagib[רק2] – one from
Metzer and the other from Meiser. He includes a photograph of his father,
architect Kuba Gever, a member of Kibbutz Ein Shemer who designed Meiser’s
mosque and appears in the photograph during construction. In her paintings, artist
Marion Fuchs, a member of Kibbutz Metzer, follows the morning walks by residents
of Metzer and Meiser along the two sides of the fence erected after a terrorist
attack on the kibbutz, highlighting the proximity and otherness within their reciprocal
gaze. Peter Jacob Meltz drew and linked pieces and compositions[רק3] gathered
from the two sites. Photographer Dror Ben Naftaly presents three spatial
photographs of adjoining Jewish and Arab towns, isolated from their landscape. In
preparation for the exhibition, documentarians Noa Karavan and Smadar Timor
interviewed Micha Ullman, Avital Geva, members of Metzer, and residents of
Meiser, who shared personal memories of the original 1972 event and how they
perceive the relations between the two towns, each from their own point of
view. The visual journal created, emphasizing differences and distinctions
experienced by each side, seeks to arouse discussion and to form the heart of
the exhibition.
The
exhibition will include an archive wall concisely reconstructing the project’s four
original operations and presenting documents from Kibbutz Metzer’s archive that
attest to the special affinity between the two towns in the past and present. The
archival files reveal a mutual relationship centering on a thriving supportive
neighborly alliance over many years. This relationship is offered as a model of
Arab-Jewish neighborly relations for Israeli society in general and kibbutz
society in the geographical periphery in particular. After two years of war and
the lingering effects of violence, pain, and shifting views on both sides, the hyphen
connecting Metzer and Meiser has the power to inspire the younger generations even
within Metzer and Meiser themselves.
Metzer-Meiser:
Take 2 seeks not only to
reconstruct and evoke forgotten memories, but primarily to investigate the
complex issue of everyday neighborly relations between Jews and Arabs and indicate
their supreme significance for the future of this land. By recreating the
different insights and distinct memories, the exhibition offers an honest and
complex discourse on shared experiences within the Israeli space.
Anat
Lidror and Tali Tamir, curators of the exhibition
__________________________________
Opening: Saturday, November 15, 2025, 12:00
Location: Givat Haviva Art Gallery
Curators:
Anat Lidror and Tali Tamir
Panel
discussion: December 13, 2025,
12:00
Closing: January 17, 2026
متسر-ميسر: Take 2 מצר-מייסר: Take 2 1972 / 2025
