Main Exhibit - By the Same Sea

Faten Abu Ali

The Green Room, 2025, installation, grafted olive and carob tree, enclosed in a plastic greenhouse.

The carob tree is a prominent feature in Arab culture. Proverbs and stories suggest the tree is haunted and should not be slept under. It is considered rigid and stubborn, in contrast to the olive tree, which is revered as a symbol of abundance and stability. This installation draws inspiration from a common saying in northern Israel: “Rob wa Zait, Zait wa Rob,” where rob refers to carob jam. The phrase reflects the cyclical nature of life and the constant oscillation between despair and hope. Preparing carob jam played a meaningful role in Faten’s childhood. For her, transforming the bitter fruit into a sweet paste, which was also used for healing wounds, now serves as a significant metaphor in her work. Through this motif, along with many others drawn from Palestinian-Israeli culture, Faten explores issues of national identity and the political, social, and gender conflicts within Arab society. In Abu Ali’s work, questions arise about the possibilities of existence and adaptation:
Can a carob tree grow in the trunk of an olive tree? Is this a natural fusion, or will it always remain charged with tension and impossibility? The work is not merely an agricultural experiment, but a visual exploration of the interaction between the natural world and the policies that shape space.
Faten Abu Ali was born in 1990 in Sakhnin, studied art at the University of Haifa, and received a teaching certificate from Beit Berl College. She currently lives and works in Jerusalem.

Hala Abu Freh

Untitled, 2016, Photography, 42×60 cm.
Untitled, 2017, Photography, 42×60 cm.
Untitled, 2024, Photography, 42×60 cm.
Untitled, 2024, Photography, 42×60 cm.

These photographs are not merely pictures; they are a visual testimony to challenges, longing, and the capacity of life to flourish even in the harshest environments. They reflect the deep connection between person and place, loneliness and belonging, memory and fate, childhood and steadfastness, and between the dream and reality in a challenging yet vibrant environment.
We, the residents of the unrecognized villages, were raised in these landscapes before we were forcibly evacuated from the city—but our memories remain. Just as we refuse to allow the erasure of our existence, the place refuses to be forgotten and becomes more than just a space; it is a repository of memories, a home for dreams, and a battleground for human survival.
Hala Abu Farih is a photographer and video editor. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Culture and Production, together with an Artist-Guide Certification program from Sapir College, Sderot. She currently lives and works in Rahat.

Fouad Agbaria

Weaving and Cracks, 2018, oil on canvas.140×100 cm.
Cracks and Bandages, 2018, oil on canvas,

140×100 cm.

Fouad Agbaria’s artwork spans multiple perspectives, from personal to social to political. Fouad draws inspiration from the culture of the Musmus village in which he grew up. A childhood nestled between cactus fences and an old house with an overhanging scent of za’atar and memories of his grandparents, olive orchards, and herds of cattle and sheep during harvest season. Through his art, Fouad attempts to formulate a position and reconstruct the village culture. The decorative carpet series features traditional arabesque motifs—paintings that evoke childhood memories of the carpets in his parents’ home. These decorations hold significant meaning in Islam and personify a magnificent and complex structure of a world in harmony. While the vibrant carpet motifs are inviting, drawing viewers closer to observe their intricate details, they also evoke a sense of unease, transporting them from the present into a memory of another place and time.

Agbaria attempts to present an internal space that is both domestic and threatening, familiar and strange.

Fouad Agbaria was born in 1981 in the village of Musmus in northern Israel. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and continued his graduate studies at the University of Haifa. He currently lives and works in Umm al-Fahm.

Micha Ullman

Ear, 2025, sculpture, bronze casting, 70x70x3 cm.

Ullman’s work is site-specific and was created especially for the Biennale. He chose the location so that the surrounding towers of the inner garden of the Gymnasia would reflect inwards into the depths of the earth. He created a negative cast of his ear in the center of a bronze square, thus inviting us to press our ears to the ground and listen to the sounds emanating from beneath the soil. As with many of Ullman’s works (such as the House on Rothschild Boulevard or the Library in Berlin), the work is easy to miss, but once noticed, it becomes unforgettable.

Micha Ullman, born in 1939 in Tel Aviv, laureate of the Israel Prize in 2009, currently lives and works in Ramat Hasharon.

Roger Ballen

Spirits and Spaces: A Series of Photographs

Intruder, 2020, photography, 3×3 m.
Omnipresent, 2022, photography, 3×3 m.
Swing, 2024, photography, 3×3 m.

“I have been photographing for five decades. During this time, I discovered parts of myself I didn’t know existed.”

Ballen’s works take us to a place that until recently was repressed: a chaotic and fragmented world where the collective unconscious makes a graphic breakthrough. This style of photography, blending absurdity, horror, and bewilderment, is so closely associated with him that it bears a grotesque variation of his name, Ballenesque. During his travels to South Africa in the late 1990s, Ballen documented white residents from the post-apartheid periphery. His strange perspective unveiled the chaos that emerged after the collapse of the previous order. In the wake of this series of portraits, the band Die Antwoord invited him to direct the music video for their song I Fink U Freeky, which became a worldwide sensation. In recent years, Ballen has focused on staged photography, depicting a distorted and grotesque reality. However, the further his photography strays from reality, the more reality seems to pursue him. The photographs exhibited at the Biennale were selected from the series Spirits and Spaces, which typically present claustrophobic, haunted spaces. Sometimes it seems as if Ballen is staging an absurd theatrical scene to showcase malicious, miserable demons. At other times, he appears enamored with their hidden wisdom.

Roger Ballen, born in the U.S. in 1950, currently lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Yifat Bezalel

One Day, 2025, pencil drawing, gold leaf, light animation on archival pigment print with music. 159×224 cm.
Animation: Nadav Levi
Music: Karni Postel
Special thanks; the musical piece was produced with the support of Room 25 and Mati Broudo

In the work One Day, Yifat Bezalel seeks to depict a divine presence emerging from enduring ruins of history. Through her drawings, Yifat aims to placate the divine sorrow that pulses within us with the stroke of an artist’s hand. A longstanding admirer of the creative wisdom of the Renaissance, she repeatedly sketches Michelangelo’s Pietà. For Yifat, the Pietà represents partial divinity and through this work aspires to tell the story of her contradictory land. She explores the tension between the Jewish prohibition against creating images and sculptures and her deep attraction to these works above all others. Bezalel hovers over the elusive seam between the figurative and the abstract. “In this movement, I seek to highlight the sense of incompleteness and the difficulty of parting but, above all, the mournful act of simulating a home that is nothing more than a false home.”

Yifat Bezalel was born in 1975. She currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Tsibi Geva

The Sea of Gaza, 2002, painting, industrial paint and oil on Formica glued to a wooden board.
135×50 cm.
Har Hazon, 2006, acrylic and oil on canvas.
240×600 cm.

Har Hazon was created in 2006 as part of a series of mountain paintings featuring empty landscapes on which Tsibi Geva worked. The painting depicts something resembling an erupting volcano with a truncated peak, rising into black skies populated by flying black birds. The image of the birds symbolizes impending doom and resonates with Van Gogh’s last painting, Wheatfield with Crows, which heralds Van Gogh’s death. On the mountain on the lower right side, the name Har Hazon is written and crossed out. Har Hazon, and at its peak, Moshav Hazon, are located in the Galilee, not far from Karmiel. The site reminds Geva of his basic training at Base 206, with night and stretcher runs up a winding road to the mountaintop in the wind and rain. Here, as a place marker and an ironic reference, the name appears within the painting as an integral part of it and emphasizes the dichotomy of “vision and its destruction“—a metaphor for an explosive power that simultaneously destroys and consumes, echoing messianic pathos and a prophecy of destruction.

The Sea of Gaza is a linguistically and politically charged name. In this work, painted on a cabinet door found on the street, with Formica in light blue, the addition of a golden sandy coastline turns the painting into a kind of pastoral panoramic landscape—a peaceful, serene beach. In contrast, the crude handwritten inscription disrupts the tranquil landscape and adds a morbid undertone to the painting. The title of the painting is an amalgamation of two familiar, blunt phrases created by Geva. The first, the Arabs are the same Arabs and the sea is the same sea, is attributed to Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s former Prime Minister. And the second is a famous statement by Yasser Arafat: the (Jews) will drink the sea of Gaza. Geva subtly and bitterly combines these two provocations into a seemingly descriptive phrase that tarnishes the idyllic beach panorama.

Nahum Guttman

Shabbat on Herzl Street 1912, 1966, Mosaic.

The mosaic “Shabbat on Herzl Street 1912” is one of three mosaics created by Nahum Guttman in response to the deconstruction of the original Gymnasia “Herzliya” campus in the late 1950s, before the school was moved to its current campus on Jabotinsky street. Nahum Guttman, one of the most prolific Israeli painters of the last century, created the mosaic in order to preserve the memory of the old building and the city he grew up in, Tel Aviv. The old Gymnasia building and Herzl street are a returning theme in Guttman’s work and they are often represented as the beating heart of the city. Indeed, back then the Gymnasia was thought of as the center of youth and culture in the budding metropolis; it hosted lectures, plays and gathherings, and even functioned as an emergency clinic in dire times. In th mosaic, the emerging Tel Aviv is represented as a solitary island bearing a single street surrounded by dunes of sand, on it the few inhabitants of the city are walking towards the Gymnasia building.

Nahum Guttman was born in 1898 in Serbia, graduate of The Gymnasia “Herzliya” and Israel Prize Winner for children’s literature in 1978, he’s widely considered one of the most influential Israeli artists of the last century.

Morjan Ghanayem

Melted Memory, 2024. Installation made
of aquarium glass, water, iron mesh,
pad, and Calicimo.
45x70x120 cm. 

After the death of her sister last year, Morjan Ghanayem felt the urge to bury–entomb her artworks in a symbolic mourning-like ritual. Ghanayem drew great inspiration from burial rites and prayers for the dead in various cultures. The sculpture she created from Calicimo and iron mesh was placed in a glass cabinet and submerged in water. Many cultures associate water with ritual immersion, purification, impurity, and salvation. But it also reshapes material, making steel brittle and transforming the familiar into something strange; this is what happened after the Calcimo disintegrated and the iron corroded. Just as bodies decompose underground and merge with groundwater, this sculpture gradually disintegrates, blending into its surroundings. Just as grief does to us—chipping away our personal traits, leaving us stuck between what was and what is no longer there. Through her work, Morjan tries to create a dialogue with memory, loss, and what lies between life and death. She seeks comfort in visiting another grave and learning to live with the absence.

Morjan Ghanayem was born in 1996 in Baqa al-Gharbiyye.

Zenab Garbia

Between Tradition and Innovation, 2010-2020, ceramics, a series of five jars.

Zenab Garbia, a Bedouin artist from Segev Shalom, combines ceramics and traditional embroidery with modern twists and innovations. Garbia creates unique pieces that reflect her culture and the changes it is undergoing. Despite a challenging childhood, she remained dedicated to her studies and passion for art. She is the principal of a group of kindergartens in the Wadi Na’am and teaches at the Kaye Academic College. In her studio-gallery, she exhibits and sells her work, which includes jars, kitchenware, and various forms of embroidery, and dreams of establishing an art school to help children and young people express themselves through art. 

Zenab Garbia was born 1972 in Al Azazma tribe, she lives and works in Segev Shalom. 

Haya Heller Degani

Frozen Scream: A Scream Trapped in Time, 2024, sculpture, glass casting.
47x42x9 cm.
The Erinyes, 2025, sculpture, three glass castings.
25x15x7 cm.
Internal Struggle, 2024, sculpture, glass casting.
28x17x7 cm.
Black Skin, white masks, 2024, sculpture, glass casting on mold in an iron cage.
38x38x35 cm.

Haya Heller Degani’s work explores wide-ranging themes, from internal conflicts fundamental to the human experience, morality, justice, responsibility, apathy, and self-expression. Frozen Scream is an attempt to translate the experience of mental pain into physical form, sparking a dialogue of sorts with populations who are suffering, oppressed, and in pain but whose voices are often unheard. The Erinyes use symbolism from Greek mythology. They represent the ongoing battle of humankind with morality and fateful decisions. They are goddess-avengers that embody the wrath of divine justice whose purpose was to pursue perpetrators of heinous crimes that upset the delicate social and moral balance. Degani’s work Internal Struggle continues her exploration of human conflicts, focusing on humanity’s inexorable inner conflict between darkness and light, hope and despair, compassion and rage, the impulse to create, and the temptation to destroy.

Contrary to the other pieces, her work Black Skin, White Masks addresses a socio-political issue. Exploring how colonialism and occupation create a sense of self-alienation and fragment the identity of the subjugated society. The occupying forces portray the local culture as inferior and press the population to adopt their values and language, forcing them into a painful dilemma between preserving their national heritage and succumbing to the pressure to assimilate into the dominant culture.

Haya Heller Degani, born in 1951 in Haifa, is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. She holds a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University and has studied glass in the Czech Republic, Germany, and England. She currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.

 

Maya Dunietz

Sound Requires a Medium, 2016, sound installation.

The song playing in the installation cannot be heard in the gallery space. To hear it, visitors must “bite” on the rod protruding from the sculpture, using their teeth as hearing organs.
In January 2025, Maya Dunietz translated, adapted, and composed a segment drawn from Michael Shrei’s podcast the Emerald, as a plea to stop the bloodshed. The result is the song My Eyes Have Seen, presented here before its official release.
“My eyes have seen too much / My eyes have seen too much / There are things I wish I had never seen / Things I hope my children will never have to see / And can you please, wash them out of my eyes, the great heart of the world? / Santa Lucia, / Eye of the lava, / Could you wash everything from my eyes / that should never have been seen? / Could you wash them away? / All the things / My eyes never should have seen, / Could you wash them away? / The great spirit of all the things that should never have happened? / And wash, spirit, wash away this memory.”

Maya Dunietz was born in 1981 in Tel Aviv and is a multidisciplinary musician and artist.

 

Dor Zlekha Levy

Depth of Speech, 2021, sound work, 5 minutes and 38 seconds
Composition, Arrangement, and Musical Production: Yaniv Mizrahi
Vocals: Dema Kablan
Mixing: Aviad Zinemanas

Depth of Speech is a sound work that continues the artist’s fascination with the complex relationship between Arabic and Hebrew. The work pivots around a love song written in both languages. The Hebrew words are a translation of the Arabic words, maintaining a structural and phonetic connection between the two. The inspiration for the song was the phonemic musical traditions associated with traditional Arabic music and the liturgical traditions of Jewish Arabic communities. The song was recorded by the same vocalist offering listeners a chance to experience the two sister languages resonating with one another and to hear them separately and together.

Dor Zlekha Levy was born 1990 and is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in creating installations that combine visual imagery, sound, video art, and multimedia performances.He lives and works in Tel Aviv. 

Ronen Zein

Two Sides of the Same Thing, series of 2 photographs, 2024.

The two works in the exhibition explore states of separation, contradiction, and forced connection between two elements that seem to belong to one another but also appear distant and dissimilar. In the first photograph, two donkeys stand back to back, turning their backs on each other. They both share the same wall, the same shadow, and the same fatigue, yet each one is looking in a different direction, like two sides of a parallel reality. The blue inscription on the wall, partly visible and partly erased, echoes an unfinished conversation. In the second photograph, two uprooted and pruned olive trees stand side by side. One retains its natural color, while the other is painted an artificial green, the color of a green screen – a symbol of the possibility of change, erasure, or replacement. They are both olive trees perhaps having grown in the same plot, but the enforced difference between them makes them strangers. Like the two donkeys, they embody a dual reality – similar yet contradictory, connected yet detached.

Ronen Zen was born in 1990 in Shfaram. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. In 2023, he won the Lauren and Mitchell Presser Award for a young Israeli photographer.

Ella Taub

Safe Space, installation comprising three
cocoon-like sculptures made of textiles,
metal, threads, ropes, tarpaulin, and wood.

110x270x300 cm,

220x200x290 cm,

320x250x300 cm.

“There is no safe place. The ground shakes, and then sirens saturate the city. There is no escape, so I created a hiding place.”

Ella Taub explores personal connections and intimate experiences of connection and loneliness. The sculptures, crafted from fabrics she collected at the flea market, hang from the ceiling like cocoons. Taub chose fabrics with domestic associations, such as cotton and lace, intended to embrace, conceal, or protect, to serve as skin that covers the body of metal and wood. Created specifically for the Biennale, its placement in the hallways of the Gymnasia encourages the viewer to peek inside through the cracks and to witness the signs of wear and dirt on the fabrics that hint at the traces of life teeming within.

Ella Taub was born in 1994 in Russia and lives and works in Berlin.

Moshe Tarka

Journey in a Cave, 2022, sculpture, plaster and plastic.
99x52x48 cm.

“And one morning while in the woods I stumbled upon the thing, stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oak and elms. And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me…” Richard Wright.

Much like an archaeologist searching for relics from the past to explore humanity, Moshe Tarka digs into his inner self to engage with darkness and trace the journey he experienced on his way to the “Promised Land”. In “Journey in a Cave” created through plaster carving, Tarka peels away layers of protection that have accumulated one on top of the other like onion skins, built as a protective armor that separates him from the world… between Israeli society, which judged and defined him as Ethiopian, and who he truly is — not just a Black man, but an educated person with dreams, feelings, and aspirations, someone who is also a son, a brother, a father, a partner, an artist. “The Black body is stripped, beaten, presented as a threat, but in fact, it is constantly in terrible danger. You will need to learn to live among these people, in this body, and in this land,” writes Taha Naisi Quatsalbo in his book “Between the World and Me,” a title borrowed from the poem by Richard Wright quoted in the introduction. Does the plaster carving process reveal figures made of black plastic that were there from long ago? Or was it intentionally done to embed or hide them within the plaster? The Black body has always been there, and attempts to deny it and Blackness as part of an effort to assimilate into Israeli white society have failed. This reality, in which at any moment this body is exposed to harm, has generated the need to protect it, hence the embedding of figures in what appears to be caves carved into the plaster mountain, in an attempt to shield and conceal them. The plaster mass seems to consist of geological layers of earth that serve as a repository of personal and collective memory — the memory of the arduous and dangerous journey from Ethiopia to Israel. The scenes within each cave coalesce into a sort of storyboard reminiscent of cinematic events, also in black and white photographs. Perhaps what Tarka is actually trying to do is build a sort of family photo album of his journey from Ethiopia, allowing him to connect the different moments of his path as a person and as an artist.

Moshe Tarka was born in 1981, and together with his family made the journey from Ethiopia to Israel when he was 3 years old. Today he lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Daniel Youssef

Mirage (Home Is Closer Than You Think), 2025, installation: pencil and marker drawings, real and plastic plants, black spray paint, furniture, printed pictures, furniture, and various household items.

In this work, like most of his works, Daniel Youssef, explores the duality of his national identity, which often conflicts with itself. On the one hand, his Swedish identity and sense of belonging to the country in which he was born, raised, and lived most of his life. On the other hand, his Palestinian identity inherited from his parents. The installation presents the clash between these identities in a single space—a recreation of the living room in his mother’s house. Amidst the real and artificial plants in the room are plastic olive and fig trees—an attempt by Youssef’s parents to recreate an orchard-like Palestinian landscape in their Swedish home. By combining authentic and kitschy elements, Youssef creates an illusion or a mirage of a Palestinian-Arab home, a vision of a home far from home. Home Is Closer Than You Think was one of the original slogans adopted by the Swedish furniture company IKEA, and Youssef’s inclusion of this phrase in the work poses a question that he invites us to reflect on. 

Daniel Youssef was born in 1975 in Sweden to immigrant Palestinian parents from the Syrian Orthodox community and currently lives and works in Stockholm.

Saher Miari

Migration, 2024, installation, wooden ladders.
Boat in a Concrete Sea, 2018, painting, black cement powder, plaster, and acrylic paints on plywood.

The installation by Saher Mi’ari comprises wooden ladders of various sizes, interwoven in a way that renders them unusable. These ladders wander from place to place without owners or purpose, echoing the Palestinian workers who left them behind. Mi’ari, who worked in construction, incorporates the raw political materials he encountered as a builder into his art. The used ladders were collected and borrowed from local Arab workers involved in renovation and construction, many of whom had their work halted for an extended period after the events of October 7. Since then, their fears and anxieties about working in Jewish areas have intensified.

The boat, which commonly serves as a symbol of wandering and immigration, resonates with both Jewish and Palestinian narratives, for better or for worse. In this piece, made from materials associated with construction, the structure is round and encased in gray cement powder applied with a spatula. The work is divided by a black stripe, evoking the horizon line across the sea in black, separating the lower part, “the sea,” from the upper part, “the sky.” At the center of the piece is a boat made of wire, with sketched lines outlining its shape. The boat is submerged and engulfed by a sea of concrete, making it difficult to move or extract, appearing stuck with no chance of reaching anywhere.

Saher Mi’ari was born in 1974 and lives in the village of Mukhr. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Art and currently lives and works in the village of Jadida-Makr.

 

Malak Manzour

Sweet Dreams, 2025, installation hanging from the ceiling comprising graphite drawings, objects made out of newspaper, red oil paint, nylon threads, and cotton threads.

Malak Manzour’s work explores the concept of peace not as a utopian dream but as a vision in which hope and fear coexist as part of a complex and tense reality. As a Druze-Arab woman in Israel, Manzour is not naïve about the situation, yet she refuses to give up on a world where peace is achievable through collective effort. The ceiling-hung installation draws inspiration from baby mobiles, which are traditionally hung over cribs to soothe and entertain infants. The drawings of deer, stars, and birds symbolize freedom and the fragility of life, while the threads represent the delicate and inseparable connection between the components of peace. Like a baby’s mobile, this dream mobile is not comforting. It also makes space for fear, anger, and rejection, inviting viewers to think about peace as an ongoing process—fragile yet flexible, elastic, and thus resilient, requiring dedicated care and understanding.

Malak Mansour was born in 1996 in Isfiya. She graduated the AIR Givat Haviva Residency Program. She lives and works in Isfiya.

Karam Natour

A Tale About Ego, 2024, digital drawing.

100×150 cm.

A Tale About Ego pits the artist Karam Natour, against a lion. The lion symbolizes power and instinct, placing the artist in a battle between control and surrender. The artist’s figure struggles to expose the lion’s teeth—a process of discovery and confrontation with the wildness within him. In the background, the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland appears as the angel of judgment, watching from the side as an eternal witness to human fate. The work questions whether thought and rationality guide our lives or if it is instinct and primal urges that drive us. The combination of mythological images, alchemy, and adventure stories raises questions about ego, fate, and interpretation.

Karam Natour was born in 1992 in Nazareth, studied for his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Samer Salama 

Floor-Wall, 2025, painting installation

The work evolved from observing a specially chosen corner of the corridor in the Gymnasia. Generations of students have passed by this corner, leaving traces of their hands or bodies while the walls absorbed the spirit of youth. Samer created a composition on two large walls using his signature imprint technique. He painted ceramic tiles and pressed them repeatedly onto the wall, with changing results depending on the existing surface color.  The impressions—one of the living body and the other of culture—merge into a single creation. On the other side, the imprint technique creates an effect of filtering or erasure: after the color is transferred from the tile to the wall, two complementary surfaces remain—one on the wall and the other on the tile. The tiles were placed on the floor to create a direct dialogue with the wall painting.

Samer Salama, who was born in the village of Yarka, is a painter and sculptor and a graduate of the AIR Givat Haviva Residency Program. He lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Nardeen Srouji

Bird on a Sleeve, 2022, mixed media sculpture, wool threads on steel Plate, 46×82 cm.
Yellow Wave, 2023, mixed media sculpture, wool threads on metal plate, 170x29x19 cm.
Blue Zone, 2025, mixed media sculpture, wool threads on metal plate.

Nardin Srouji’s work explores traditional Palestinian embroidery techniques. In Bird on Sleeve, Nardin uses the color red, symbolizing femininity and fertility, and the image of a bird, which almost always appears as a pair. By changing the material from soft fabric to metallic plates and embroidering its negative form alongside the solitary bird, Nardin plays with the symbolic and traditional meanings of these symbols and adds new layers of meaning. In Yellow Wave, Nardin pushes the boundaries further by turning the embroidery into an autonomous sculptural object. The wavy shape of the sculpture, which mimics the movement of fabric, creates a powerful tension between the softness of the threads and the rigidity of the metal. Did the metal succumb to the movement of the threads, or did the pattern reshape the form itself? These works challenge traditional uses of symbols and imagery, inviting us to explore the evolving meanings of past symbols in a contemporary context.

Nardin Srouji, who was born in 1980 in Nazareth is a multidisciplinary artist and currently lives and works in Haifa.

Chasity Polk

Reflection: Face to Face, 2025, photography series. 

Through this work, Chasity Polk invites us to explore and understand our emotions through another’s eyes. This series is rooted in the belief that every connection with another soul removes barriers between us. If we as humans can see ourselves in someone else—in their love, struggles, and desire for safety, wellbeing, belonging, understanding, and acceptance—then peace ceases to be an abstract, inaccessible idea and becomes an act of recognition.

Spanning diverse cultures across Asia, Africa, and Europe—including Benin, Bhutan, Iraq, Israel, Nepal, Palestine, Sweden, Turkmenistan, Vanuatu, and Yemen—these images seek to remind us that we are never truly strangers. A gaze, a touch, a moment of vulnerability—remind us that, regardless of place or circumstance, we will always find reflections of ourselves in the faces of others.

Born in 1995 in Michigan, USA, Chasity Polk is a photographer working at the intersection of art and peace. She currently lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.         

Hamutal Fishman

Aftermath, 2025, pencil, ink, and dip-pen on paper
Triptych: 80×40 cm, 80×40, 80×41 cm

From a distance, the Separation Wall appeared to Hamutal Fishman like a long thin, grey sheet of paper, clinging to the curves of the earth and bending to its changing forms. Nothing had prepared her for the feelings that arose as she stood before it in 2005 in Abu Dis, a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem. Her thoughts turned to the Palestinian residents-those prevented from meeting because of the wall, and those who had lost their homes, livelihoods, and dreams; whose gazes were crushed against the concrete blocks as they searched for the world they once knew, now out of reach.

Since that day, the Separation Wall has never left her thoughts. When she draws it, she is constantly aware of the gap between its physical appearance and its image on paper. Yet, drawing it allows her to visualize the process of dismantling it as well as other oppressive systems.

Aftermath is one of several series created by the artist over the last eleven years, presenting the Separation Wall from different angles and in different contexts. In this triptych, she envisions what would happen the day after the wall collapsed—an era in which fragmented space begins to reconnect. She imagines what the encounter between plants, animals, humans, and scattered pieces of the wall would look like. “I wanted my gaze to linger, unhurried, on the unique tapestry of hesitation, apprehension, and cautious encounters in the land as it recovers.”

Hamutal Fishman was born in Tel Aviv in 1966. She is a graduate of the Diploma program in Puppetry at the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts in Berlin and currently lives and works in Jerusalem.

Nira Pereg

MWE, 2025, installation, straight and convex mirror.
Clair, 2024, video, 16 minutes.

MWE furthers Nira Pereg’s interest in space as an arena for the tension between personal and public. The piece is situated at the end of the main corridor on the entrance floor, opposite the school bulletin board inviting the viewer to linger a moment in which they are simultaneously a student, a viewer, a citizen, and a subject. The word “ME” is embedded in the floor of the Gymnasia as a reference point within the collective space, serving as a reminder that the observer is an independent entity. Above this, Pereg places two mirrors that reflect the word, challenging the sovereignty of a single focal point and prompting a new way of viewing the relationship between the individual and the group.

Border presents the fundamental principle of the church or of religion—the separation between the sacred and the profane, and between different belief systems. An Orthodox nun points with her finger, like a tour guide, at a crack between the stones, a scratch on the wall, or a change in the color of the floor. presents the fundamental principle of the church—separation. These subtle architectural markings, humbly denote the status quo, which has guided the church since the 18th century, marks the territorial division into six different Christian denominations. The silent, short, repetitive loop reveals the covert bureaucracy that governs this sacred space.

Clair follows an Orthodox nun (the same nun who appears in Border) during a routine cleaning shift at night in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Through Pereg’s camera lens, the daily chore of cleaning is depicted as a ritualistic—a repetitive motion alongside pilgrim rites and visiting worshipers. By erasing, washing, and sweeping, the nun not only maintains the site but also preserves the sensitive status quo between the various Christian denominations that share the space. Pereg documents this act as a repetitive, reflexive movement that lies between labor and ritual and explores the boundary between the individual and the overarching church mechanism.

Nira Perg was born in 1969 in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. She is a graduate of the Cooper Institute for Art and Science in New York. She currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Haim Perry

Untitled, 2000-2010, Sculpture, Iron and Wood.

Untitled, 2000-2010, Sculpture, Iron.

Untitled, 2000-2010, Sculpture, Iron.

Haim Perry was an artist who sculpted out of his love for the material and life in general. His works combine welded metal, processed iron, and discarded machine parts, which he transformed into characters full of personality and humor. The sculptures, scattered across the lands of Kibbutz Nir Oz, depict human figures and dynamic images, reminiscent of laborers, farmers, and characters from everyday life. Haim Peri also founded the White House Gallery, located along the road between Kibbutz Nir Oz and Nirim. In this space, where the walls are rough and the plaster exposed, Perry showcased a variety of art exhibitions while slowly building up a sculpture garden around the gallery. In doing so, he blurred the boundaries between art, environment, and community. He saw the gallery as a kind of “living canvas,” where each exhibition is an additional layer in the local landscape.

Haim Perry was born in Givatayim in 1944, and spent most of his life in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Haim Perry was abducted into Gaza on the 7th of October 2023 and was murdered while captive on the 14th of February 2024.

Nimrod Tzin

Unspoken Apologies, 2024, video, 3 minutes and 14 seconds.

Tzin presents self-portraits on a video screen of figures from the local social scene. He adopts various identities and gives them a voice—or rather himself—as the first step in a process of rectification and healing. Through this ritualistic action, Tzin practices identifying and longing for connection, attempting to compensate for the absence of a contemporary empathetic dialogue by creating one in an imaginary space. The work reveals the tension between the desire for correction and feelings of helplessness. It poses questions about conflict arising out of identities and identifications while exposing the emotional complexity of this act and the confusion between guilt and responsibility.

Nimrod Tzin was born in 1978 and studied digital cinema at SAE Institute in France. He lives and works in Israel.

Liora Kaplan

Spring Has Returned to Me, 2025, sculptural installation, autoclaved aerated concrete, plywood, wire mesh, iron chain, polymer clay, and wood.
Lower part: 58x44x120 cm.
Cone: 24×134 cm.

Liora Kaplan’s work creates a tension between sacred space and the human realm, between threat and a sense of presence. It forms a physical and mental space, forming a kind of axis that connects and holds the tension between them, that invites the viewer to feel this tension within their own body. The work contains several postures; one can almost imagine a body taking shape—a moment of complete suspension in breath, an anticipation of something about to unfold. The space between the elements is the heart of the work—it defines the tension, the fragility, and the dynamic between heaviness and levitation, between stillness and becoming. The title of the work is taken from Vita Nova by Louise Glück:
“Undoubtedly, spring has returned to me, this time not as a lover but as a messenger of death; yet still it is spring, still it is meant tenderly.”
These words, like the work itself, hold within them the paradox of renewal that offers no full consolation.

Liora Kaplan was born in 1974 in Herzliya, studied at the Midrasha School of Art, Beit Berl, and the Avni Institute. She currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.

 Julia Schäfer

Re-reverse, 2025, video and sound installation on three channels.

The work explores the German tradition of Auslaut (ringing out), in which it is customary to ring a bell upon the death of a community member. This custom, which was the central source of communication within and between communities, is slowly fading from the world. The installation explores this phenomenon in a historical context. Over two World Wars, Germany melted down over 145,000 bells from churches to “support the war effort.”  The shortage of bells led to the search for replacement bells in occupied territories. Currently, more than 3,000 stolen bells from Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium, and the Netherlands still hang in German churches. For the Re-reverse video work, the artist chose a specific group of bells, some were cast as replacements after the war, some were stolen, and others were miraculously spared from the melting process and returned to the countries from which they were taken.

Additionally, due to the unique casting technique whose secret has been lost, each bell has a distinct sound, and no two are alike. Accordingly, each bell has a unique name, such as Susanna. These almost human characteristics are compounded by the first-person inscriptions etched on their sides, such as Anselm cast me in Heidelberg, or even sayings whose wisdom surpasses even ours, such as, after life, there is death.

Julia Schaffer was born in 1991 in Germany and currently lives and works in Paris.

Dani Karavan

As sand upon the Seashore, 2025, installation, mirror, sand, funnel.
Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, Print of Wall Relief, originally mounted in the Knesset, Jerusalem, Israel, 7 x 24 m, 1965-6.

Dani Karavan grew up in Tel Aviv in the early 1930s, when a large part of the city was still sand dunes. For him, the footprints of his bare feet in the sand were his first works of art. The sand and sun, walking and physical space, public and private, local and universal, blend easily, almost naively, into all of his works. It is time that frames this piece. Time that is linear and moves along an axis spanning an individual’s lifetime, or cyclical marking the cycles of nature or society. The hourglass is a combination of both. For individuals, time is running out every day as their life nears its end, but for the collective, the wheel of time is continually replenished. The installation of this piece in front of the historical mosaic by Nahum Gutman (1966), which depicts the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium as it appeared in 1912 on a sand hill in Tel Aviv (where the  Shalom Tower now stands), adds a layer of historical continuity beside a looming threat of extinction.
Karavan used sand as an artistic material and began incorporating it into his works as early as the 1980s. Time is also an important component of his art, often represented through features that cast shadows and function as sundials. As a political artist, he integrated the image of time with the promise given to Abraham and his two sons.
Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem– A print of a wall relief that nearly every resident of Israel recognizes, often without realizing it, welcomes visitors to the second autonomous biennale at the Gymnasia. The original work has stood in the Knesset since 1965-6, serving as a silent backdrop to thousands of speeches, ceremonies, and declarations of war and peace, as well as countless moments of light entertainment, fear, joy, sorrow, and hope. Karavan stated during his lifetime that much of his inspiration for designing the wall sculpture came from the seminal text of Israeli democracy, the Declaration of Independence, and that he sought to express these values visually. The wall indeed presents these values that were, and still are, seen as the founding principles of Israeli society, as envisioned by the founders of the State: tolerance and openness, modesty, fraternity, and a pursuit of peaceful living. The artist’s choice to incorporate a natural material into the hall signifies an intention to merge political, cultural, and social actions with nature rather than reject or distance himself from it. Karavan’s decision to use limestone excavated in the Galilee, from the quarry in the Arab-Muslim village of Deir al-Asad points to the ongoing and everyday nature of intercultural work and creative relationships. Even the project to construct the wall was a team effort, in which professionals—mason carvers and stonecutters from diverse sectors of Israeli society, worked side by side on high scaffolding.

Dani Karavan was born in Tel Aviv in 1930. He was the recipient of the Israel Prize for Sculpture in 1977. Karavan passed away in 2021 and is considered one of Israel’s greatest artists. 

Adam Rabinowitz

Baby Comet, 2024, video, animation. 41 seconds.

A text about the work written by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer:
It comes on like a sudden blush.
It comes on like a flash. The swell is an explosion and a glowing, heat-radiant belly.
Hypercolor gradients channel thermal vision, full of bodily warmth and covert operations.
There is a distant hill and a lip, appearing a mouth as its own destination and horizon. It is sublime and searing. It circles around and back, never ending.

Adam Rabinowitz was born in Hadera in 1973, studied at Bezalel Academy for Art and Design. Today, he lives and works in Los Angeles.

Omer Shach

Lovers Moloch: A Series of Four Sculptural Works
Golden Incense, 2024, sculptural installation, porcelain, plaster, oil, fire, sponge, MDF, gallium, lycra. 135x70x65 cm.
Moloch’s Bed, 2024, sculptural installation, flies, insect catcher, silicone, MDF, glass, tin,    copper, sponge, wood. 110x115x190 cm.
Tofet Lullaby, 2025, sculptural installation, wax, pigment, oil, wood, carpet, sound system, aluminum. 100x120x40 cm
Rushing Tunnels, 2025, sculptural installation, silicone, industrial paint, earphone, aux cable, and MP3
Dimensions: 10000/4/3.3 cm.

Lovers Moloch is a series of sculptural installations, a personalized temple in which couples can perform ceremonies such as a parting ceremony for a relationship that is ending. The installation is tailored to the proportions of a body, textures and a complete sensory experience. Thus, the sculpture returns to its origins as a religious object that encourages prostration as a ritual or sacrificial act. Shach intertwines handcraft techniques with industrial production methods and materials, merging them with mythical imagery and the allure of contemporary consumerism.

Lovers Moloch explores personal separation in a time of collective crisis. Shach explains that in contrast to his desire to “purify” his work from external dimensions, he allows them to seep in, influence, and shape his artistic expression. Thus, instead of resisting the spillover from public to personal, he chooses to surrender and turn his attention to external disruption. This surrender is brimming with potential.

Omer Shach was born in 1991 in Jerusalem. He graduated from the Department of Multidisciplinary Art at Shenkar College. He lives and works in Tel Aviv.

 

HIWAT-LIFE: Lina Otom Jak Agolon, Eden Gebre, Mebrhit Gebremariam and Achberet Abraha

Peace Column, 2025, tricot thread, crochet knitting.
320×30 cm.

Peace for Lina Otom Jak Agolon is “rain falling on green trees, warm sunlight on damp earth.” The artists of Hiwat weave together their concept of peace, rooted in the memory of daily life as it unfolded next to a nurturing natural world and within their shared cultural dialogue. Stitched together into a collective Peace Column, their individual works reflect the archetypal image of the vertical line that bridges heaven and earth: the totem, obelisk, column, skyscraper, and other vertical symbols, raised as a reminder of the human thirst for the spiritual and abstract.

The Hiwat project, which means life in Tigrinya, emerged from a belief in craft and art as powerful sources of empowerment. Following the disbandment of the groundbreaking Kuchinate collective, its creative leadership—asylum seekers from Africa — has taken a new creative direction, experimenting with new materials and refining their unique artistic language. For 12 years, the collective served as a professional home for hundreds of asylum-seeking women, providing them with employment, supporting them through the challenges of displacement, cultivating their creative development, and showcasing the quality of their work to diverse audiences. The collective’s creations spanned small-scale series of craft, and art —from vibrant crochet baskets, material dolls, jewelry (and countless other products) to works exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide.

Lina Otham Jack Agolon was born in 1976 in South Sudan and lives and works in Tel Aviv. Eden Gebre was born in 1987 in Eritrea and lives and works in Tel Aviv. Mebrhit Gebremariam was born in 1989 in Eritrea and lives and works in Tel Aviv. Achberet Abraha was born in 1986 in Eritrea and lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Women of Savane-Kabuye Rwanda Collective

The Journey, 2023-2025, cotton thread on cotton cloth
66x60cm
Cattleman, 2023-2025, cotton thread on cotton cloth
66x120cm
Guarding the Camels, 2023-2025, cotton thread on cotton cloth,
75×100 cm
At Lake Kivu, 2023-2025, cotton thread on cotton cloth
75x62cm
Coffee Harvest, 2023-2025, cotton thread on cotton cloth
82x55cm
Zulu Woman Warrior, 2023-2025, cotton thread on cotton cloth
70x64cm
Sisters, 2023-2025, cotton thread on cotton cloth
68x60cm

From a distance they look like paintings, but each piece of art in this exhibit is made entirely of thread. Utilizing three different colors of thread on one needle, the artists create nuanced shades and depth, mixing thread as a painter mixes paint. Stitch types are varied to produce textures and shapes—long, flowing stitches for mountains, sky, clothing, and fur; tight, tiny stitches for beans and grains. When the needlework is finished, other women wash and stretch each work and prepare it for mounting. The variations in style from piece to piece highlight the individuality of the different artists, but because each piece is a collaborative effort, the women have chosen to sign each piece with the name of the workshop—Savane Kabuye—rather than any one individual’s name. Their subject matter derives from Rwandan culture: village life, traditional practices, dance, and musicianship, as well as the animals and plants of East Africa. This textile art is created by a group of Rwandan women who are survivors of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. Some have ties to victims, others to perpetrators, but they work together in peace and in the hope of a better future for themselves and their families.

The women of the Collective have been creating these incredible works of embroidery since 1997.

The AIR Givat Haviva Residency Program

The Givat Haviva Collaborative Art Center fosters a shared society for Jews and Arabs through culture, art, and art education. Its unique residency program hosts ten young art graduates, both Jewish and Arab, for a five-month program. The program includes three months of residency, artistic development, and action, followed by a two-month group exhibition at the Givat Haviva Art Gallery, with art events and discussions. The participants are selected based on their talent and interest in a shared society and are mentored by program staff and leading artists. During the program, the artists participate in lectures, workshops, artist meetings, group dialogues, inspirational tours, and community-based artistic initiatives. The program’s uniqueness lies in the Jewish-Arab partnership and the intensive, shared experience it offers—enabling mutual acquaintance and collaborative learning, alongside an artistic vision that pushes the boundaries of fine art. The residency is an important bridge for young artists, helping them develop and work in Israel. Its overarching goal is to create an influential network of artists that will advance artistic, social, and cultural change in Israeli society and its art scene while preserving the country’s artistic infrastructure  Despite, and especially in light of, the challenges posed by the events of October 2023, the program has continued into its second cycle, with the third cycle currently underway—based on a firm belief in the importance of encouraging young artistic voices within a shared Jewish-Arab dialogue.