Sea – Land

This is a three-part exhibition that moves along the spectrum between the psychological-social dimension and the political and personal dimensions.

The first part is devoted to artist and photographer Simcha Shirman. His works, iconic black-and-white photographs taken over the past 35 years, deal with the relationship between human beings and nature, alienation and human warmth, and hidden and visible political spaces. The photographs are printed manually, using traditional methods, and move across a range of greys, inviting us to view reality as complex, without the oppositional, dichotomous contrast that divides it into black or white. This contrast characterizes the brilliant light of this country and carries with it the divisive meanings that fracture our society today.

The series "Horizon Line" reveals an almost abstract encounter between sea and sky. It is a space emptied of human presence, an unattainable nature, meditative in its beauty, yet one that also creates a sense of confinement and unease. Is it a horizon of hope, or a promise that was never fulfilled? Other works, such as "Tel Aviv Port," capture nature together with traces of human domination, such as a sea in which fragments of wood float, remnants of something that once existed there and fell apart. In other works, we encounter meetings between people and nature along the boundary between land and sea. These encounters are both momentary and timeless. They bear the marks of a particular culture and period, yet remain somewhere between the specific and the possible. Shirman does not remain outside the scene, but places himself in "Self-Portrait and Tent," beside a tent during reserve duty in Samaria, like a kind of tourist, in dialogue with nineteenth-century photography and Civil War imagery.

The body of work by Noa Shizaf forms the second part of the exhibition. Its first section is a photographic series documenting an "Unnamed Road," which runs in its northern section from Kafr Qara to Kibbutz Regavim, between January 2016 and the autumn of 2017. Landscapes stretch along the roadside, their beauty disrupted by a local reality in which a military base located on the outskirts of the Arab village asserts sovereignty and sharpens the boundaries of the village. The road encourages the passing viewer not to stop, but to continue from one end to the other. The evidence scattered along this route, which has connected the communities of the region since Roman times, documents both the uppermost layer and archaeological layers from earlier periods. Advertising signs catch the eye of the fast-moving traveller, while concrete blocks mark a military firing zone closed to passage. Together, these elements offer testimony to the fabric of life and the relationship between the land and its Jewish and Arab citizens.

The second section is a project exploring the sea and the coastline between Acre and Caesarea as a kind of future archaeological X-ray. It corresponds with the way Israeli culture preserves and formulates the memory of its past through material representations such as public architecture, heritage sites, and materials widely used in everyday life. As such, it brings the following questions into focus:

Rania Akel, the third part of the exhibition, deals with her home, currently under construction and designated for demolition, with future plans for the boundaries of her village, Kafr Qara, and with a broader regional perspective, using future planning maps as the underlying material for her works.

On land, Rania stands with both feet firmly on the ground: a woman, her family and her home. She wishes to live an ordinary and lawful life in her country, yet finds herself in a permanent state of "clarification." The story of her village is also the story of a society, a state and the Middle East. Her situation leaves her no choice but to examine future plans, laws and processes of legislative change concerning home construction in Arab society.

At sea, she creates another chapter in a project that has continued for years: "Return to Sender." In this chapter she sails out into the open sea and releases bottles containing censored letters, ten-year-old letters addressed to her former lover. Here she asks the vast, free sea to carry them to new shores, where they may perhaps be found by the people who live there. Inside the bottles is a request that whoever finds them send her a message telling her where they were discovered, on a postcard bearing a stamp from their country, symbolizing hope.

The visible land conceals beneath it endless layers and traces. The way it is divided, and the boundaries drawn across its uppermost layer where it meets the air, raise questions about the relationship between human culture and the land, and between one person and another.

The infinite sea, whose seabed cannot be seen, is different. Its boundaries are also invisible, and the horizon separating sky and water changes in ways that do not depend on us.

The maritime culture created in a coastal country such as ours is primarily a culture of beaches, swimming and fishing.

Most of us remain close to the shore. What is it about the sea that prevents most of us from venturing into its depths?

The sea is an unknown mass, sometimes deceptive and sometimes dangerous.

The greatest abyss on the face of the Earth, its floor hidden from view.

Is it right to see the sea as our collective unconscious and the land as the conscious part? On land, on that visible surface, we struggle over every inch. Does any of this have meaning in the depths of the water? And what can the water tell us about what lies behind all those conscious actions we undertake as a society?

The land gathers within itself the signs of different periods, perceptions, cultures and states of consciousness, in its ports and along its shores, between Acre, Caesarea, Tel Aviv and Jaffa, Gaza, and the spaces in between.

After all, we too will eventually become archaeological findings.

It is fascinating to consider how we will be perceived when viewed from the future.

An advanced human culture? Primitive? Forceful? Wise?

And finally, why do we fight over the land? It was not meant for that. It is supposed to heal. So is the sea, in fact.