Looking from a Distance: Israeli Local Identity in a Globalized Art Scene

“I don’t want to reduce my work to a derivative or comment on events caused by other people. My goal is to create an event by myself,” says Ran Slavin, a Tel Aviv-based video and sound artist. Even with this professional philosophy, Slavin made an exception during the tumultuous years of the Second Intifada, which began in 2000. “When the situation became extreme,” he told Ayelet Dekel for her film Intifada Cult, “there was no way out of addressing it, of reacting.”  According to Slavin, he feels as outraged and powerless by his complex geopolitical surroundings as anyone else, but he only comments on them directly when critical situations arise. He calls his other, more indirect allusions “cracks,” which “surface” naturally and organically.

Like other artists from places with complicated histories, Slavin returns to his locality in convoluted ways. Events and ideas go through abstracted filters that artists avoid parsing, since they feel it would compromise the individuality of their lens. When artists like Slavin leave their environments, they envision a vacuum where they can freely pull ideas directly out of creative depths, yet they still struggle with the “cracks” in their work.

Berlin, Amsterdam, and New York have become the central magnets for international artists, including many Israelis. Columbia University’s own graduate visual arts program accepts only twenty-five students out of two thousand applicants, which in the past ten years has included a disproportionate amount of Israelis. This reflects a global spread of the prestige of Israeli artistry as well as a marked increase in curiosity about Israeli art. More and more artists have gained foreign gallery representation, and many have chosen to relocate not only their work but also themselves. Place has lost its significance in contemporary art with the rise of online and portable mediums such as video and digital photography. Artists can function in multiple art scenes, and at times they purposefully confuse the audience about their origins in order to create an international, or multinational, identity removed from the constraints of a specific locality.

Artists and artworks may not be easily tied down to place anymore, but institutional frameworks still force artists into some form of national identification. Britain awards the prestigious Turner Prize each year to an artist under the age of fifty “born, living or working in Britain.” The prize has come to represent British contemporary art specifically, despite the fact that several winners—including the 2000 winner, Berlin-born Wolfgang Tillmans—are not of British descent. The Israeli complement to the Turner Prize is the Gottesdiener Art Prize, given by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art to an Israeli artist under forty. Like the Turner Prize, the Gottesdiener Art Prize nominates three leading young artists, presents their work in a major exhibit, and awards a substantial monetary prize to the winner. Unlike the Turner Prize, however, many of the Gottesdiener nominees neither live nor work in Israel. Jan Tichy, a leading nominee in 2011, was born in Prague and lives in Chicago. Moreover, his current work does not specifically address Israeli issues.

By calling Tichy a leader of Israeli art, what does this say about the national art scene in general? Some maintain the cynical perspective that the Gottesdiener Art Prize has lost its power and simply nominates the most internationally successful artist. This way, Israel can use that artist’s prestige to advance its own instead of promoting actual Israeli development and innovation. On the other hand, it may point to a wider definition of Israel’s artistic identity that includes, by the Gottesdiener’s parameters, anyone that has spent time in Israel. This more fluid definition reflects the “cracks” referred to by Slavin. Despite the foreign origins of many nominees, they still come to define a scene, replacing geographical definition with a conceptual one.

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Adi Nes, a prominent photographer and the 2000 Gottesdiener winner, has gradually devalued the role of place in art. While many considered him an Israeli artist in the past, today Nes sees no contradiction in raising a family in Tel Aviv while exhibiting his art in New York. Thanks to deliveries, online exchanges, and inexpensive flights, he feels that no artist has to live in the place where he displays his artwork. Nes’ large-scale and cinematically produced photographs recreate biblical narratives, scenes from the Israeli military, and other heroic situations. He relies on historical references and iconic aesthetics to create multiple layers of meaning in a single image. In the Soldiers series (1994-9), for instance, different audiences can connect with different elements of a single photograph. An art audience may recognize the references and relate the image to its biblical origins. In contrast, an Israeli audience might read the soldiers as symbols of heroism, leading them to ponder the issue of military masculinity. An informed foreign audience could limit its critique to the Israeli Defense Forces specifically, while a less-informed one might see a more general military. Nes acknowledges that outside Israel even the most sexual or homoerotic scenes were understood as patriotic representations of the Israeli soldier. But only in the context of mandatory military service can deeper layers of an Israeli soldier’s world, such as his sexual identity, be developed.

When asked about his 2006 series Biblical Stories, Nes said he “thought the first layer that would exist is Judaism—that I can’t run away from my Jewish identity. But when I finished the project, I found a different answer. I found that humanity, friendship, and being generous and compassionate, these were the last things that I have as a human being.” Yet despite how the biblical stories echo Western Christian art, the accompanying text—featured in its showcase at The Ohio State University—presented the work as “a project with an Israeli pedigree.” Thus, while the work may have objectively avoided ties to a single place, it was still perceived in relation to Israel.

But Nes does not become discouraged when his works yield interpretations different from those he expected. It is natural, he says, that viewers read their own life into a photograph, just as artists naturally reflect their experiences within it.

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An artist’s choice of subject is a complex one. Many Israeli artists concede that their works contain dormant local themes while others stress their disdain for the forced and superficial categorization of their work as “Israeli” or “political.” Na’ama Tzabar, a 2009 Gottesdiener finalist who lives in Brooklyn, describes her connection to Israel as an “undercurrent” in her work. It finds an expression both in forms subjectively related to boundaries and in an “undercurrent of violence” that creeps into her art. But these themes do not exist from the outset. Tsabar left Israel in order to pursue broader opportunities for promoting her art and to expand her range of interests and subjects.

What does it mean when she says one’s work should come “from within,” but that in order to find this inner space she felt the need to leave Israel? For her and many others, a certain blank background—or a colorful, diverse, and inspiring background—must exist in order for inner ideas to flow to the surface.

Instead of searching for a blank space, other artists draw from their own environment. Tichy uses sculpture, sound, and video in reaction to social and political issues relevant to his changing environment. This marks a new role for place not as the definition of the artist’s identity but as a subject for engagement, casting the artist as a nomadic social commentator.

Tichy grew up in the Czech Republic, studied in Jerusalem, and now teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago. He deplores when critics try to pinpoint his identity or take interest in his personal story over his work. His fascination with global themes like racism and segregation infuse his work. He argues that the artist should function primarily as a social observer, a belief that makes him an outsider dependent on his non-existent local identity.

Ironically, the Israeli art institution sees Tichy as one of its own. This speaks to a greater problem in the art world. Contemporary artists seek to create fluid and intricate relationships with local spaces, but they are often pinned to their national origins by the institutions they try to evade. These institutions, in turn, read local messages into their globally minded works.

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Dor Guez also believes in the artist’s role as social commentator, but his own work possesses strong ties to Israel as a specific place. As the son of a Jewish father and a Christian-Arab mother, Guez’s work deals with his personal identity shifts as well as those of his community. His family’s history ties him to the land but not to the state, perhaps because of his community’s history of political losses. Lacking a national identity as a result, Guez views artists as social forces with a responsibility to critique their society.

Nonetheless, Guez avoids grand or pretentious political statements and instead focuses on the intimate effect that “politics” has on individual lives. In his 2010 series Scanograms, he enlarged and reproduced old family photos documenting his family’s spread across the Middle East, which occurred following the Arab expulsion from the city of Lod in 1948. He presented photos of weddings, children, and families being made and fragmented, leaving the political background for their stories left to the viewer’s discretion. The rich history evoked by the images avoids any general, hollow, or even condescending political message. Despite his concern that the Israeli institution would not support an artist who criticizes the state, Guez was nominated for the 2011 Gottesdiener prize.

Inbal Abergil, a photographer in the Columbia MFA program, left Israel with the hope of integrating into the global art scene. Her work deals with memory and public space versus enclosure, which she admittedly approaches through both Israeli and Jewish lenses. She has been forced to confront the localized reception that her work has received abroad. Because of this, Abergil feels she must meet expectations to “represent” Israel within the arts community while at the same time creating art that is accessible to local audiences elsewhere. In her latest project entitled All that is Alive Passes, All that is Dead Remains (2010), she focuses on non-subjects, deserted spaces, and subjects obstructed from view or covered by light. Though Abergil sees them as symbols of concrete subjects, this project may also embody Abergil’s struggle to “represent” her Israeli identity and simultaneously integrate herself into a larger art scene. Abergil’s focus on overlooked subjects avoids having to choose unambiguous subject matters, an obstacle that other artists must confront. Perhaps non-subjects can only support themselves in an international environment, where they are no longer symbols of geopolitical nuances.

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A politically charged space and its mix of cultures and histories can be either suffocating or stimulating. Innovative artists tend to avoid direct statements and over-articulation. They use their works as visually engaging musings or explorations of a subject, not as answers. As a result, there is no universal pattern tracing the motivations of Israeli artists to either address or avoid political issues. But while an array of unique approaches may exist, the reception of their work assumes greater political stature than they had originally intended.

Before it displays the 2011 Gottesdiener nominees showcase, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art has constructed a retrospective of one of Israel’s prominent artists from an earlier generation, Moshe Gershuni. In his paintings, most of which come from the 1980s, the angst and turmoil of Israeli existence appears fresh from the artist’s gut. The Holocaust, the occupation, Jewish tradition and its resentment, homosexuality in the macho culture of the IDF: each burden that has weighed on Israeli existence for Gershuni is there in bold colors and words. Confronting this defining legacy of Israeli art, one understands the artist’s urge to leave in search of a blanker slate.

ADELA YAWITZ, CC ‘12, is an Art History and Archaeology major. She can be reached at
asy2105@columbia.edu.

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