No space between us

Nine young artists, Jews and Arabs, were selected to participate in a Givat Haviva residency program for a period of five months that included three months of communal living and creating. The exhibition “No space between us” presents the works they created throughout this period in painting, sculpture, photography, video, and sound. The name of the exhibition is the starting point for a personal and collective journey in a shared space, one that is both physical and emotional. The works examine two contrasting types of gazes: one consists of works that look inwards, at the close and intimate, the familial, and the other looks outwards, toward nature and the human sphere. The exhibition is a collection of gazes that meet and linger together, intersect, and influence each other. 

Chen Chefetz paints a family meal in France, on a tablecloth; portraits of family members dining together around a family dinner table, looking and smiling at each other; he expresses his sense of longing for a family he never knew, a yearning for belonging alongside a feeling of being absent. In the video “Crumbs” he cleans up the crumbs left over from the meal, and in the background his grandmother’s voice tells the story of her immigration voyage from Morocco through France to Israel. Fayza Badarneh returns to objects that belong to her mother, and her special connection through them to her mother: a wallet, a rolling pin, a mortar and pestle with their aroma of garlic. Fayza carves on rolling pins words that her mother would say to her while preparing the dough, such as “press”, “crooked”, “quickly”. Amit Gavish paints old childhood photographs on envelopes, documents of her own childhood and that of her twin sister. The fragmented paintings on the envelopes reveal a moment of togetherness that is also a moment of parting and separateness.

The heaven-earth axis is evident in the work of Yarin Abu Hamad, who takes us to the star map and draws us back as a melody through an analog music box, bearing testimony to a jarring event that occurred. Alumah Fishman photographs zones of conflict through the window of a travelling car and joins the photographs to form nocturnal panoramic collages. This cinematic gaze frames the landscape as a theater set with no actors. Noga Davis directs her gaze both at Givat Haviva and the close familiar local landscape and at the view of Yehia, an Arab boy studying at Givat Haviva, whom she met during her time there, resulting in a dialogue.

In her video work, Lila Abd Elrazaq examines terms from the field of biology, such as “parasitism”, “devouring”, and “competition”, through the behavior of animals in nature – metaphorically examining their reflection in human society. Tala creates small sculptures resembling embryonic figurines, dipped in sugar water, and invites both insects and viewers to approach these quasi-human creatures. Sarah Khatib creates a large painting of a space that resembles a set, where birds and human figures switch roles. Their gazes intersect and create endless movement within the painting.

“No space between us” is a call for closeness, closeness among humans and between people and art, particularly in the present times when reality is trying to keep us apart. Through the works that seemingly seek to interconnect, a new space of movement is formed, where the gaze roams freely, unfettered.

Harel Luz, Artistic guide and curator of the exhibition

 

Program director: Anat Lidror

Artistic guidance and curatorship: Harel Luz │ Program coordinator: Orit Reingewertz

Mentors: Avner Singer, Asad Azi, Galia Bar Or, Hanan Abu-Hussein, Michal Niv, Manar Zoabi, Moshe Roas, Nardeen Srouji, Adina Bar-On, Farid Abu Shakra, Ron Amir, Penny Yassour

Guest artists and curators: Anisa Ashkar, Stav Struz Boutrous, Abed Abdi, Sari Golan, Tomer Heymann.