Art is a game of perspective – it examines the arrangement of things in space, steps back to understand what happened, and steps forward to touch things in real time. But what happens when there’s no time for processing and no distance to create perspective? What happens when we try to talk about things that are still happening?
In the new group exhibition opening at Beit Avi Chai, “My Life at the Moment,” curated by Amichai Chasson and Rika Grinfeld Barnea, five prominent Jerusalem artists present works created during the two years of multi-front war. This is an exhibition without breathing room, presenting what happened in the artists’ studios while the war raged. It examines the complex relationships between the artist and the reality of their life, between art and war, between creation and life, death and pain.
To mark the opening of the exhibition, we met with curator Rika Greenfeld Barne and Dr. Tamar Gispan-Greenberg, director of the Jerusalem Print Workshop, where the works of Raya Bruckenthal displayed in the exhibition were also created, and formerly curator and director of The New Gallery Artists’ Studios Teddy. Together we discussed the questions this exhibition raises.
This exhibition presents works created in the last two years. Do you think it’s possible to already talk about what happened in Israeli art during this war, or is it still too early?
Rika: “Some of the artists feel that the works they created are not yet mature enough to be displayed in an exhibition, but that’s exactly what we want to show. Amichai Chasson and I have no pretension to give things a title. We even debated whether to write texts about the works. This is indeed an exhibition, but we tried not to define it so we could feel it’s a living thing. In my view, the role of this exhibition is to create conversation more than to determine what the conversation is. Placing works that differ so much in style and material side by side creates a feeling of entering the studio, of a sketchbook exhibition.”
Tamar: “And yet, the moment you define this collection of works under the theme of daily life against the backdrop of war, the exhibition’s framework is clear. I’ve encountered several exhibitions recently that address the subject in a very roundabout way. They talk about touch, comfort, contact between people, touching on the war topic in a much less direct way.”
Rika: “True, and still, it could be much more literal. We consciously chose not to present very graphic materials, but rather representations that are somewhat distant. The exhibition moves along the axis between the figurative and the abstract, between the close and the distant, between the direct and the roundabout.”
As a curator, is it right to approach reality in exhibitions or rather to distance oneself from it and let perspective do its work in due time?
Tamar: “Artists create all the time, within and from reality. As an art historian, in my research I examined art in the context of society and asked how art is affected by social changes. And yet, personally, when the war started and in its first two years, when I was still a curator at Teddy, I avoided dealing with it and its implications directly.”
And what does this say about the role of art in general?
Tamar: “Artists need to continue creating art, and it doesn’t matter if they put it out there or not; it’s not relevant. Eventually, maybe in ten years, we’ll be able to examine all the work that happened here.”
Rika: “Art has a role. The question is whether art is escapism or a response to life. If it’s a response to life, it’s hard for me to understand how one can not address the war. The war is our daily life; it’s the configuration in which we live, even if we live in Jerusalem.”
Tamar: “Art is first of all the need of artists to create. A very personal need, an innate need. Some artists are more attuned to the society and environment they live in, and others are more attuned to the depths of their soul. Art is first of all the artist’s; it has no role. Artists don’t need to feel they are prophets or spokespeople of the generation. Art is also a historical document, but this shouldn’t trouble the artist; they are driven by an internal need to create.
“Sometimes it’s hard for me that we, the curators, the critics, those who interpret art, impose our interpretations on it. It needs to be done delicately.”
Rika, do you think if you curate art created during wartime, you’ll end up with an exhibition about war?
Rika: “Yes, and when we frame the work as a work about war, we allow the viewer to have a more complex and less literal artistic experience.”
Tamar: “Every viewer comes with their own baggage, which activates their experience and their understanding of the work. I avoid making clear declarations in my curating about the connection of the works to the situation, because art can be interpreted in all kinds of ways. The feelings the works deal with are usually more ambiguous and open to interpretation, and we, the viewers and curators, project our understanding onto them.”
It sounds like curators have great power – the connection between different works and their framing. Who decides what we see in the end, the curator or the artist?
Tamar: “It’s a very delicate mixture. The artists bring their world with them, and the curator comes with their agenda, and you need to find some middle ground that combines the artist’s approach and the curator’s approach. But once the artist decides to display their work, everyone has the freedom to bestow it with whatever interpretation they want. As curators we have a certain responsibility for what we tell the public and for the degree to which we subordinate the works to our agenda.”
Is the curator’s responsibility actually not to touch too much?
Tamar: “It’s not black or white. You need to make the work accessible, but you need to do it with a lot of responsibility. It’s also the artist’s responsibility to mediate their work correctly, if they’re interested in that.”
Are we facing a period where museums will fill with dark and post-traumatic art?
Rika: “I think that the opposite is true: there’s acceleration, there’s growth. People want to live. Like a baby boom. In my view, the movement of life, even in me, simply increased. I simply want to live more, and I hope the museums will be wise and exhibit this kind of work – of the desire to live.”
Tamar: “I think we will see both art for its own sake, as well as art engaging with the here and now, as it has been over the years. This war caught us at our most vulnerable. I lived my life until the war in ‘la la land,’ in a kind of repression, thinking that life here is relatively normal, and the generation above me also lived in the same repression. I believe we’ll continue to cling to some expectation that this period that was shattered for us on October 7 will return, even though we know it won’t return that quickly. I want to think that we hold on to the everyday and ordinary things and also to art for its own sake, because art is not just a historical document. Either way, I hope the art world will be wise enough to give space and expression to quality art and works dealing with the essence of creation itself and its values, alongside works that touch on the here and now and what was.”
Visit the exhibition “My Life at the Moment”>>
This article was originally published in Hebrew.
Main Photo: Respite\ Meydad Eliyahu