Memory Pictures #6
The digital Messiah will yet be sent, and he will toy with us throughout our lives.
Tohu | תוהו | توهو
Performance Post Lockdown: Tino Sehgal et al in Down to Earth at Gropius Bau
In an era of social distancing, an exhibition about ecology turns into a meditation on human connections. Michal B. Ron reviews the recent “Down to Earth” exhibition at Gropius Bau.
This Is Not a Gun
Why is black skin perceived as a threat in American public spaces? How come a 17-year-old boy is portrayed in the American media as a thug? And how do a sandwich, a bible, or a bunch of keys get identified wrongfully as weapons and lead to the shooting of innocent passersby? Rotem Rozental writes about artist Cara Levine's project "This Is Not a Gun," which reacts to dozens of incidents of police shooting at citizens – mostly black men – as a result of misidentification.
On the Corrupt in Art (a reading of Hannan Abu-Hussein's artworks)
The musician, artist, and poet Wisam Gibran suggests a socio-cultural reading of four works by the Palestinian artist Hannan Abu-Hussein's - Agina (Dough), Pouring the Oil, Bukjia (Bundle), In Between the Destruction of the Father - as representatives of inner worlds reflecting art's association with the cycle of life and death, movement and stillness, the sacred and the forbidden, the presence and the absence.
Reading List
Tohu Podcast: A Conversation with Ohad Meromi
David Duvshani talks with Ohad Meromi about sculpture, modernism, the 1990s, exile, and border crossings.
The Lights of Migration: A Different Take on Old Paris
At the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the collection show “Chagall, Picasso, Mondrian, and Others: Migrant Artists in Paris” polished the art history of a century past with a gleaming, political immediacy. Matt Hanson reviews the show and its curatorial take on themes of increasing global concern.
John Berger: The Transformational Pulse Beats of Art
Following a number of recent books by and on John Berger, coinciding with the renowned critic’s passing away in 2017, Norman Saadi Nikro dives into some of Berger’s writings and drawings. He explores the transformational impulses driving Berger’s relational, molecular, and constellation-like approach, and its relevance to today’s world in crisis.
Optical Illusions
Hagai Ulrich talks with Oran Hoffmann about perception, photography, perspective, and optical illusions, about Cézanne, Albers, Vasarely, and about performativity in photography, following Hoffmann's exhibition "Love-Sick Heart," which had recently been shown at The Lobby - Art Space.
tohumagazine@Instagram
Artists as a Public: A Conversation with Abraham Kritzman
Under the extreme political controversy surrounding the Barbur Gallery in Jerusalem, and in the shadow of the political decision to evict the gallery from its current space, Lonnie Monka talks with Abraham Kritzman, an artist and the gallery’s curator, about being an artist-led institution, curating and writing about art, and the concern that the political struggle will overshadow the attempt to make art.
Under the Restrictions #3
In the third chapter of her column, Goni Riskin takes advantage of the easing of the restrictions to make a series of portraits, with styling and makeup. As a precaution, she works on a rooftop, in natural light and open air. She uses a no-contact thermometer to take the temperature of her sitters, the makeup artist, and herself. She keeps the styling down to clothes from the sitters' closets, with outside loans of items when absolutely necessary.
Black Cottage
Meital Katz-Minerbo visited the Dublin retrospective exhibition of the work of Derek Jarman, a well-known queer filmmaker, visual artist, AIDS activist, and gardener, who had been marginalized for being openly gay and HIV positive. Following the stirring event, she recalls her first encounter with Jarman's work, five years ago, and her visit to the garden he has tended in his home in Dungeness, in the county of Kent, England.
Under the Restrictions #2
Goni Riskin joined a residency program at Arthura – a new center for art, design, and community in Emek Hefer (Hefer valley), in central Israel. She has chosen to take mostly pictures of the elderly population, in an attempt to understand how to create interaction while maintaining social distancing and wearing masks and gloves.
Art as a Retrospective Prediction
Painting, prediction, life drive and death drive, devastation, mourning, and creation. Psychoanalyst Dr. Merav Roth offers a succession of thoughts, insights, and personal associations following a series of meetings with artist Tsibi Geva, on the occasion of his exhibition "Where I'm Coming From," which has recently been presented at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art.
Under the Restrictions #1
In her new column, Goni Riskin looks at how she might continue to photograph under the coronavirus restrictions. In the first installment she creates a series of portraits while trying to observe the rules, which are often not entirely clear: stay within a 100-meters range from home, and then it's 500 meters; maintain a distance of two meters from other people; avoid entertaining at home people who do not live there.
We R Viral
Wiki information, personal insights, spoken word poetry, rap, and video samples coalesce into this audiovisual essay by Yoav Ruda. Dealing with cultural and social evolution in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the artist mixes all of these ingredients to portray the critical moment we live in, and to call for positive action.
Disappearing Cities: Beirut and Berlin
A one-night event in Berlin this February brought Charlotte Bleicher to ruminate about the relationship between two cities - Beirut and Berlin. She writes about processes of cultural loss taking place in both cities, and about artistic acts of defiance against this disappearance.
Boullata: Like a Fish Out of Water. Or, Art as a Visual Thesis
Palestinian visual artist Kamal Boullata (b. 1942, Jerusalem) departed this world on August 6, 2019, from his exile in Berlin at the age of seventy-seven. He leaves behind a formidable artistic legacy, which has made him stand out in the field of criticism and artistic production within the Palestinian and Arab art scene. In this article, Moroccan artist and poet Samir Salmi tries to present a comprehensive portrait of a multi-faceted artist, and reveals the strengths of his research, creative and critical work.
Available in Audio
Tohu Podcast: A conversation with Rafram Chaddad
David Duvshani talks with Rafram Chaddad, artist and connoisseur of cooking traditions of the Mediterranean, who lives in Tunisia. They discuss art and food, wandering, traditions and their preservation, artworks created by Chaddad in recent years, and the contemporary art scene in Tunisia.
The Crisis of Reason: A Conversation with Kader Attia
In this age of crisis of reason, is repair possible? Matt Hanson speaks to renowned French-Algerian artist Kader Attia about his recent works, about "La Colonie" - a decolonization space that the artist runs in Paris, and Attia's reading recommendation for self-isolation.
A Call to Preserve Memory Through a Future Gaze
How is Palestine represented in contemporary art, and how do Palestinian artists deal with the notions of memory and the past? Larissa Sansour raises in her work many questions concerning ideas of sanctity, homeland, and memory, in a manner that helps turning them into an illusion. In an analytical review and an in-depth critical gaze, scholar Housni Alkhateeb Shehada presents a broad picture of the place, the dialogue, the memory, and the conflict the figures are experiencing in the work recently presented by Sansour, in the Danish Pavilion, at the 58th Venice Biennale.
Available in Audio
Tohu Podcast: A conversation with Raymond Pettibon
David Duvshani talks with Raymond Pettibon about politics, nostalgia, baseball, and drawing, on the occasion of Pettibon’s exhibition “And What is Drawing For,” currently at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Whose Land is It?
In her on-going multidisciplinary project, "The Road to Ein Harod," Efrat Galnoor tracks the journey undertaken by Raffi, the protagonist of Amos Kenan's novel with the same title. In a series of exhibitions and events, she raises political questions about borders and freedom of movement, and looks reflexively at the way space is constructed by way of stains – an act that questions not only what you look at, but how.
Memory Pictures # 5
Her daughter had painted the view that was hanging outside the window
Of the house that was not her original one.
The Book as Agora
How should art institutions respond to the current political climate? Michal B. Ron reviews Paper Monument’s recent book, in which various art professionals offer their propositions to six perceptive questions.
Nuances of Belonging #13
The 13th video of this column is the final chapter in the series, which Hamody Gannam started more than 3 years ago. During these years, he has been spotting different nuances in the lives that unfolded in the village of Iqrith, as expelled residents and their family members and friends continued to maintain different forms of dwelling and community life in this allegedly vacant village.
Available in Audio
Tohu Podcast: A Conversation with Hakim Bishara
From researching and re-imagining a 1943 exhibition of modern Lebanese art in Jerusalem to writing for a leading independent arts magazine, to being part of an artist-run gallery in Brooklyn, Hakim Bishara has been experimenting with various practices in the past few years. David Duvshani recently met the Palestinian writer, curator, and artist in New York for a conversation about these multiple ventures and about the New York cultural scene in the Trump era.
Local Photography
Why wasn't the work of local photographers being taught at Bezalel Academy's photography department, in its various iterations over the years? Did local photography, dealing with the connection between people and place, exist? Hagai Ulrich examines the history of local photography following the publication of Noa Sadka's book, Photographic Truth is a Natural Truth – a Chronicle of a Photography Department.
Ammar al-Beik’s The Sun’s Incubator: Images of Time and Memory
Ammar al-Beik’s film The Sun’s Incubator offers a destabilizing, non-linear view of the Arab revolutions from a domestic setting. Margherita Foresti analyses the film’s complex temporality, manifested mainly through the motif of the TV screen.
Drawing Reaction #16
From the life of animals in Japanese art to the gradations of slow release: Revital Lessick creates a series of drawing reactions to her gallery tour in Washington and Berlin
Available in Audio
Tohu Podcast: A Conversation with Mierle Laderman Ukeles
In this Tohu Podcast, David Duvshani meets performance and social practice art pioneer Mierle Laderman Ukeles in Jerusalem for a conversation following her move to Jerusalem and her latest retrospective exhibition at the Queens Museum in New York. They talk about manifestos, authenticity, collaboration, art education, women artists, labor organization, life in Jerusalem, and the state of the political Left in the US and in Israel/Palestine.
A Conversation With Jonas Mekas
“If you live in the past, if you can’t escape, then you cannot build a new house, a new future.” Christos Paridis talks with Jonas Mekas about memory, trauma, and the afterlife, about the war years in Lithuania and the 1960’s in New York, and about cinema.
Available in Audio
The Art of Art Writing
“What it Means to Write About Art features conversations with writers who average three decades of experience turning phrases that go to press with a bold, uninhibited passion for art.” Matt Hanson reviews Jarrett Earnest’s recent book, a collection of interviews with prominent art writers such as Jerry Saltz, Roberta Smith, Lucy Lippard, Rosalind Krauss, and Yve Alain Bois.
Apple Juice from the Tap: a Conversation with Martine Bedin
David Duvshani interviews Martine Bedin, one of the founders of the radical Italian design group Memphis, in Paris. Bedin outlines the practices of the legendary group, its impact on her work today, and the relevance of its positions to the current political, social, and economic arenas.
Resurrection After All: Russian Cosmism as an Intellectual History Project
Russian Cosmism is the subject of the widely-exhibited film trilogy by Anton Vidokle, which traces, or better, resurrects the presence of Cosmist ideas in post-Soviet art, engineering, and architecture. Alma Mikulinsky reviews the films' installment in an artist-run space in Toronto, as well as the theoretical corpus that has been developed around the subject in the last four years.
Memory Pictures #4
The colors jostled on the clothes line, and she was glad she had taken down the black.
Drawing Reaction #15
Gvul (Border) Gallery in Kibbutz Hanita, Hansen House in Jerusalem, Art Gallery at the Memorial Center Tivon, and Beit Hankin Museum in Kfar Yehushua: Revital Lessick in another round of drawing reactions.
The Need for a New Revolution
The 6th Athens Biennale expressed the need for an urgent new self-identification of the confused contemporary community, either in local or in international terms - an urgent need of a new “revolution” that would define the 21st century. Christos Paridis writes about the exhibition, which he describes as an adult playground for those who are seeking questions or answers to present and future nightmares.
Freeing the Child Soldiers of Salva Kiir
Among many tragic examples, the murder of South Sudanese national, Lost Boy and Canadian citizen Richard Lokeya, and the abduction of journalist Clement Lochio Lomornana (whose whereabouts are still unknown) by state actors, testify to the life-threatening risks implied in refugee justice work in South Sudan today.
How to Explain Hare Hunting to a Dead German Artist
Joseph Sassoon Semah, a Baghdad-born artist who now lives and works in Amsterdam, is about to embark on an extensive multi-site project, in Amsterdam, Jerusalem, and Baghdad. Berlin-based poet and author Mati Shemoelof talks with him about his years living as an artist in Israel versus being a Babylonian Jew and an artist in Europe. They discuss Judaism, diaspora, exclusion, and acts of concealment and building.
Other than Whom?
“There is no curatorial passivism, any more than there is a passivist war.” Michal B. Ron reviews Maura Reilly’s book Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating and adds a note about the heroless politeness of the recent Berlin Biennial.
AnArchic Archive: Phenomenal Photographs and Multiple Exposures
In what ways can an archive be regarded as an anarchic practice of collection and circulation? Following his visit to the exhibition Unboxing Photographs: Arbeiten im Fotoarchiv, Saadi Nikro raises some thoughts about the way interventionist archivists, artists, and photographic practitioners work with photographic archives.
Drawing Reaction #14
A concrete beach at Gate 3 gallery in Haifa, Code vs. Code and Hiroshi Sugimoto at the Tel Aviv Museum, and Jonathan Hirschfeld at Givon Galley. Revital Lessick returns from another gallery tour with a new series of reaction drawings.
Memory Pictures #3
Salma would never tell me about her connection to water. I don't recall ever asking her if she could swim.
Klipot Nogah #1
A new podcast from Tohu (in Hebrew). Listen to Eitan Ben Moshe conversing in each installment with a different interesting personality on matters spiritual and cultural.
“Life is a reflection of a very unruly creator” - in the first installment’ Eitan ben Moshe talks with Shai Tubali - writer, thinker, spiritual teacher, lecturer, and director. His teachings and his books combine popular psychology with Eastern and Western philosophies. Since 2012 he has been living and teaching in Berlin, where he founded a learning and treatment center dedicated to his methods.
Nuances of Belonging #12
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography.
The Middle East Film Initiative: A Conversation with Ruth Priscilla Kirstein
“It’s often Terrorist 1, Terrorist 2, Terrorist 3, and for women it’s even worse.” Matt Hanson talks to Dr. Ruth Priscilla Kirstein, the founder of The Middle East Film Initiative in NYC, about discriminatory practices towards and lack of representation of Middle Eastern cultural practitioners, and about some new community-based methods offered by MEFI for addressing them.
This Story is Far from Over
“In Esperia, a portrait of a forgotten artist and a former secret service agent is interlaced with a personal narrative depicting the filmmaker’s relationship with her fading grandfather.” Hakim Bishara reviews Haidi Motola’s new film revealing her grandfather Jacques Motola’s double identity as an Israeli painter and secret service agent in Egypt.
Chapter VII: The Gape and the Creation
In the seventh segment of his travels, Mendelovitch climbs to the top of Mount Tabor. At midnight, he encounters a growling bird that opens for him a new chapter in his search for the Queen.
Home Goods
A carpet made of concrete, a ripped duvet, and toy soldiers scattered across a single bed. East of Elsewhere's “While You Were Sleeping” housed a collection of domestic furnishings distorted and deconstructed to reflect the consequences of conflict seeping into everyday life.
On Magic, Illusions, and Tabletop Tricks
Karam Natour's solo show "Repeat After Me," on view now at the Umm el-Fahem Gallery, is a sort of birthday song for a newly-born magician. Bar Yerushalmi has viewed the show, and he brings back thoughts on the difference between trickery and true magic.
Returning to Accra: Between Nina Simone, Ama Ata Aidoo, Fassbinder, and the Cockettes
Moving across New York and San Francisco, Paris and Munich, Accra and Lagos, artist and scholar Malik Gaines’s Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible offers a lively and affirmative account of stage, dress, film and television, and music performance. Saadi Nikro reviews Gaines’s recently published book, discussing its many intersections of race, theatricality, subjectivity, and sexuality.
That Man in That Box
Can we talk about gentrification in the context of colonialism and deprived lands? What does it mean to own the land? Rana Asali raises questions after visiting “That Man in That Box”, a performance piece by Palestinian artist Rabia Salfiti.
Memory Pictures #2
Hadeel Abu Johar follows Salma's transition from childhood to loss… and from one bed to another.
The Spontaneous Show
Hagai Ulrich converses with Nadav Bin-Nun about music and art, improvisation, violence, and narcissism, following the release of his Spiritual Album.
Nuances of Belonging #11
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography.
Drawing Reaction #13
From North America to the north of Israel, Revital Lessick presents another series of reaction drawings following a gallery tour in New York, Toronto and Haifa.
How Testo Junkie Transforms You
“An author who had taken testosterone as a drug in a philosophical self-experiment that she documented in a book - it shook me up so much that it wouldn't leave my mind." Michal B. Ron and Hannah M. Bruckmüller discuss naming, sexuality, fables, giving birth and giving death, in response to Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie.
Editorial
The show "Stolen Arab Art" that recently opened in Tel Aviv is tainted by exploitation, ignorance, incoherence, and impersonation. The organizers blatantly disregard the will of the chosen artists not to show their work in Israel. The members of Tohu's editorial board object to the patronizing act perpetrated under the guise of enlightenment and dialogue.
Emergency Takeoff: on Halil Altindere’s Köfte Airlines
"Köfte Airlines retraced a trail uncannily similar to that of its subject, from Germany to Turkey and back along a zigzag of uprooted expectations." Matt Hanson writes about Halil Altindere's work in the context of the refugee crisis, as well as the effects of the current oppressive political climate in Turkey on artists and cultural practitioners.
Memory Pictures
Hadeel Abu Johar travels roads and lanes of near memory, hinting at what is beyond, asking questions about the tension between the image and the event and about the human search for a place and its meaning.
Nuances of Belonging #10
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography.
Relinquishing Freedom (Willingly) to the White Man
A mother screams as her baby is wrenched from her arms; a sex fest featuring Canada's founding fathers and various forest animals; and Miss Chief – a powerful, sexy, transgender indigenous figure in traditional attire, beads, and feathers. Liora Belford visits "Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience," the travelling exhibition of the work of artist Kent Monkman, who wonders where are the painters who have documented the hunger, the poverty, the pain, and the annihilation of a whole culture.
Drawing Reaction #12
Avner Ben Gal at Givon Gallery, Ron Arad at Gordon Gallery and Neta Cohen at Artspace Tel-Aviv. Revital Lessick presents another series of reaction drawings following a gallery tour in Tel Aviv
Chapter VI: The Mountain and the Egg
In the sixth episode of his travels, Mendelovitch lands in the besieged city of Asscre. He escapes the battle and ends up at the foot of Mount Tabor.
First Daughter of the Confederacy
Efrat Vital's show, Winnie (Real Daughter), presented recently at the Herzliya Artists' Residence, brings to the fore the denial and suppression of the problematic history of racism, slavery, and Colonialism in the southern part of the United States. Hagai Ulrich has visited the show, and he suggests thinking about it from a local point of view as well.
Obvious Artifice
"Pre-Israeli Orientalism: A Photographic Portrait", written by Dor Guez, focuses on a photographic genre from the early decades of the twentieth century as a local, unique, and complex case of visual Orientalism. Hagai Ulrich reviews the book and suggests broadening the conversation through the values and characteristics of performance art.
"Hēliotropion" - Shattering or Healing
In anticipation of "Hēliotropion," Tamar Getter's exhibition recently on display at the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, H.S.L.R. talked with her about horses and other matters that preoccupy her in her work: painting stoppages, idealization, and painting as a "machine," immobile.
The Mendelovitch Festivities
Launching the first scroll of the Travels of Schneur Zalman Mendelovitch, by David Duvshani and Shahar Feinberg, published by Tohu Magazine and Barhash.
Saturday, March 24, 2018, at 20:30 Zimmer, 12 Franzois St, Tel Aviv-Yafo
Organized Choreographies
Dana Yahalomi talks with Elinor Salomon about the work of Public Movement in the public sphere, about the political role of the museum and its collections, and about the technology of knowledge transfer. This is a second conversation in the framework of cooperation between Tohu and Kadist.
Gender and Senses: The Art of Anisa Ashkar
Anisa Ashkar's work uses the different senses to problematize the intersection of categories that compose together her multi-layered identity. Tal Dekel visits her recent solo show and writes about Ashkar's use of the whole sensorium to blend categories, destabilize and dismantle them.
Kings of Arabia
Visiting the Ameen Rihani Museum in Freike, Lebanon has started Matt Hanson on a path to trace the Hebrew translation of the well-known author’s Kings of Arabia, which came out only two years after the first Arabic edition. What were the motivations behind this translation and how did its impact evolve over the years?
Looking for Neighbors
"From a local perspective, 'A Good Neighbour' brought hope to an art scene wrapped in a dark curtain." Hou Rf reviews the 15th Istanbul Biennial, curated by artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset.
Nuances of Belonging #9
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography.
The current column was shot using a DIY drone, built in Iqrith by Ghassan Toumie.
Chapter V: The Sea and the Split
In the fifth chapter, Reb Mendelovitch, the Soldier, and Gvir Sassoon leave India and sail through the Sea of Stench toward the besieged port of Asscre.
אמנים/אמניות נגד הגירוש | Artists Against Deportation | فنّانون ضد الطرد
Artists, curators, members of the arts community - join this petition:
The arts community calls for an immediate cessation of the expulsion of asylum seekers!
Curating Your Way to Survival: Bar Yerushalmi talks to Adrian George
"The future of curatorial practice has to be shared, democratic, and incorporating many voices." Bar Yerushalmi interviews Adrian George, Director of Exhibitions at ArtScience Museum in Singapore, former Deputy Director of the UK Government Art Collection, and author of The Curator's Handbook
Drawing Reaction #11
Ido Bar-El in Kibbutz Baram, Israel Kabala in Tel Aviv, Niv Tishbi in Jaffa, and Tamar Sheaffer in Haifa. Revital Lessick wanders and reacts through drawings
A House is not a Home
In an age of great geopolitical stress, heightened nationalist sentiments and ethnic strife, and forced migrations, Christos Paridis visits the 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art and returns with thoughts about the search for a new home.
Fricative Consonants
Bar Yerushalmi visits the exhibition of the artists' collective Slavs and Tatars at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius and joins them on a magic carpet ride through the demographic, linguistic, religious, and social realms of the kingdom of Eurasia.
A Cloud of Philosophy
Can it be that Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is not a book, but a restless musical album? Michal Sapir outlines a path for reading and interpreting the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein that meanders through music, literature, wooly clouds, crossroads, sea horses and ethics.
Stories in Reverse
Following his current solo exhibition, “Stories in Reverse”, at Piartworks in Istanbul, Huo Rf talks with Merve Akar Akgün about memories, commonality, queer culture, and artist’s privacy.
Metaphoric Sites
In the midst of the general lack of commitment of the central exhibition of the Venice Biennale this year, Avi Lubin visits three significant and interesting projects that offer metaphoric sites and spaces for experimentation and cooperation.
Portrait of an Artist as an Old-Young Man
As the art schools' graduation exhibition season is winding down, Tali Tamir revisits the work of two veteran artists – Dov Or-Ner and Dov Heller – and wonders why the radicalism that has bound the avant-garde to social values, crossed various lines, and melted away conceptual and geographical borders found no place in the major museums.
Drawing Reaction #10
Revital Lessick visits Pinchas Cohen Gan’s studio, Avital Geva’s Ecological Greenhouse in Kibbutz Ein-Shemer and the exhibitions of Louise Bourgeois and Atalia Shachar in Tel Aviv
An Illusion about Understanding
In Richard Deacon's comprehensive solo show at the Prague Municipal Gallery, to see the large-scale sculptures viewers must get close, bend down, crane their necks upward, focus on the small details, and then again step back and look at the whole work. These exploratory actions that the viewers perform with their bodies and their movement through space have led Hagai Ulrich to try to understand how Deacon manages to physically express ideas, symbols, and signs that cannot be realized in time and space.
Blood Spatter
Crop Marks, Sharif Waked’s latest work, is a life-size photographic self-portrait of the artist with his head cut off. Alma Mikulinsky writes about this beheading drama and tries to understand our fascination with images of head amputations, such as Henri Regnault’s painting of the brutal execution in Granada and Ned Stark’s decapitation in Game of Thrones.
Chapter IV: The Rinsing and the Ejection
In the fourth chapter of Mendelovitch's travels, after being ejected from the Beast's belly, he and his companion bathe and dine with the Luvioubi faithful and the Gvir Sassoon.
Absence, Speculation, Text
"I must build a 20-meter-long bridge, made of words, to the mystery works by Amos Groswagel, assuming they are where they should be." Shai-lee Horodi writes from a distance about Amos Groswagel's show at Livluv 24 Gallery in Tel Aviv.
The Bone Stuck in the Hunger Artist's Throat, or Redemption by Refusing the Apple
Michal Na'aman writes for Tohu about fasting and abstinence, about anorexia, and about the Original Sin, guilt, and redemption in Kafka's writings
Drawing Reaction #9
Dreamers Awake, Giacometti, The Trickle-Down Syndrome and The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to a gallery tour in London.
In Search of Critical Curating
In light of the recent criticism of documenta 14 and the Venice Biennial, Noah Simblist returns to the book/magazine issue “Curating Critique,” to comment on whether and where curating and criticality might meet today.
The Problem of Nostalgia: Learning from Athens in documenta 14
A depressing human condition resolved with grand gestures of politics, sentimentality, fashion, and merchandise. Michal B. Ron writes about documenta 14 in Kassel.
Beloved Country
Orit Ishay's comprehensive show at the Prague City Gallery includes images of bomb shelters, military uniforms, mourning rituals, woman soldiers, and a scrapbook of local dried flowers that had been given to General Allenby. It seems that the entirety of activities Ishay engages in creates an interesting critical course in which information loses its content and reality sheds its substance.
Present Progressive: Speculations On Cultural Imagination In The Middle East
What do recent accounts of institutional cultural practice in the Middle East offer to further the understanding and the development of contemporary cultural production in the region, and what do they fail to address? Lama Suleiman reviews the latest volume in the ongoing Ibraaz publication series on visual culture in the Middle East and North Africa
Nuances of Belonging #8
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography.
The current column was shot using a DIY drone, built in Ikrit by Ghassan Toumie.
A Memory Gap
As part of a new joint initiative of Kadist and Tohu Magazine to publish video interviews, Elinor Salomon talks with Elham Rokni about reconstruction and memory, biography and history, Orientalism and men with a Middle Eastern appearance.
The Art of Struggle
The exhibition "The Color Line: African-American Artists and Segregation" has gone a long way to illustrate the struggle for the civil rights of blacks in the USA, but at the same time, it traps the art on display in a conceptual prison. Revital Madar writes about the recent exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
Drawing Reaction #8
Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to exhibitions, specific works, and art events
Chapter III: The Tunnel and the Light
After escaping the Doubters into the maw of the elephant, Reb Schneur Zalman Mendelovitch meets Jonah and a former soldier in the belly of the beast.
Panel Discussion: Ethno-futurism in the Middle East - Critical Afterthoughts
Tohu Magazine conference — Space is the Place: Afrofuturism, Arabfuturism and the Search for New Dimensions
Between Nostalgic Utopia and Present Returns
Yael Messer's lecture from Tohu Magazine conference - Space is the Place: Afrofuturism, Arabfuturism and the Search for New Dimensions
Speculative Queerness: How Science Fiction Ruined my Relationship with the Gender Binary
Arrate Hidalgo's lecture from Tohu Magazine conference - Space is the Place: Afrofuturism, Arabfuturism and the Search for New Dimensions
Aliens: Beyond Western Christendom
Mohammad Jabali's lecture from Tohu Magazine conference - Space is the Place: Afrofuturism, Arabfuturism and the Search for New Dimensions
Dark Speculative Futurity and the Rise of Neo-Nationalism
Dr Reynaldo Anderson's lecture from Tohu Magazine conference - Space is the Place: Afrofuturism, Arabfuturism and the Search for New Dimensions
Athens before Kassel
A message from Europe’s past that resonates in Europe’s present makes a powerful opening political statement of documenta 14. Christos Paridis visits the world-famous exhibition and finds the decision to open it this year in Athens before Kassel more than just a colonial project of the German art scene.
Black Swan, White Swan
"Slowland," Bianca Eshel Gershuni's and Oree Holban's joint exhibition, opened at Barbur Gallery in Jerusalem in the wake of the highly visible dispute between the gallery and the municipality, and the latter's attempts at censorship. Hagai Ulrich visited the show and returned with some thoughts about the political prospects suggested by the space the two have built.
Drawing Reaction #7
Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to exhibitions, specific works, and art events
Coded Information
Over the past thirty years, Miki Kratsman has been active as an artist, photojournalist, investigator, and archivist. Hagai Ulrich reviews his new book, the result of collaboration with curator and scholar Ariella Azoulay. The book examines the way in which photography can turn individuals into ultimate suspects.
Security Check for Heaven
With a rich display of over 200 artifacts, the Metropolitan Museum exhibition “Jerusalem, 1000-1400,” subtitled “Every People Under Heaven,” intended to introduce the viewers to a peaceful, spiritual, culturally and religiously diverse place, which they imagine the city of Jerusalem to be. Rula Khoury visited the exhibition and came back with some thought-provoking questions.
Mobilizing Stills
“The work of the photojournalists’ collective Activestills does not settle for reflecting the grim reality by providing representations of it, but offers a more active mode of photography that joins the protests of the struggling communities being photographed.” Nadeem Karkabi reviews the recently published book that covers a decade of Activestills’ collective photo-activism.
Nuances of Belonging #7
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography
How to (or not to) Write about Contemporary Art? An Interview with Gilda Williams
Gilda Williams, author of How to Write about Contemporary Art, talks to Bar Yerushalmi about the problems, dilemmas, and possibilities of writing about art today.
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Do the works of Michal Makaresco represent cheap fetishism and dubious situations? Were they made casually, easily, or on a whim? Hagai Ulrich visited the show at Hamidrasha Gallery in Tel Aviv and came back with thoughts about good taste, honesty, as well as questions about weight and scale.
Chapter II: The Rising and the Trembling
In the second chapter of the comics column about the travels of the Hassid and illustrator, Reb Schneur Zalman Mendelovitch, we find him in India during the Uprising of the Doubters, headed by their leader, Doubting Thomas.
Drawing Reaction #6
Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to exhibitions, specific works, and art events.
Playing Spirits
Between 1918 and 1924, the German missionary and anthropologist Martin Gusinde traveled to Tierra del Fuego and West Patagonia, the southernmost point in Chile and therefore the globe. Alma Mikulinsky writes about the traveling exhibition of Gusinde’s photographs, documenting his encounter with the indigenous people of the Selk’nam, the Yamanas and the Kawésquar.
General Land of Vision
Thirty-eight technologically complex projects, a century of experiences of the moving image, 18,000-square-foot of installations, drawings, 3-D environments, sculptures, performances, paintings, and online spaces: an immersive experiment or sensory overload? Rula Khoury visits the impressive exhibition Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016 at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Internal Interactions
Contemporary painting as the wreckage pile of Modernism or genuine Modernist painting? Focusing on composition or the subjects? Hagai Ulrich writes for Tohu on "Take Painting," showing at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art.
Nuances of Belonging #6
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography
Chapter I: The Dream and the Fire
Reb Schneur Zalman Mendelovitch was a member of HABAD, an illustrator and miniaturist, who lived in Hebron in the middle of the 19th century; he has traveled all over the world. He is also associated with many surreal and anarchistic Hassidic stories. We follow his imaginary travels from chapter to chapter in the comics strip, as he wanders through countries and ages, from the Great Indian Rebellion to Akre during Napoleon’s siege and Victorian London. In the first chapter, Reb Mendelovitch leaves his home after seeing a vision, and ventures out into the world.
Two Point Perspective (part III): Forms of Refusal
The third and final part of the essay by Noah Simblist focuses on Akram Zaatari’s use of dialogical exchange as an artistic strategy. While completely different in their dynamics and outcomes, Zaatari’s conversations with both Hagai Tamir and Avi Mograbi, he argues, reveal different degrees of both personal and political engagement and, at the same time, various forms of antagonism and refusal.
Drawing Reaction #5
Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to exhibitions, specific works, and art events.
Temporary Structures
Many emotionally and politically charged places appear in Nir Evron's work, among them Rawabi, the new Palestinian city, the Seven Arches Hotel on Mount Olive, in Jerusalem, and the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, USA. What happens to the concreteness of the locations and the specific political stories when the works separate content and form? Hagai Ulrich reviews Evron's show, "Masad (Foundation)."
Haus Atlantis
Following Karen Russo’s recent video work “Haus Atlantis,” which blends the genres of documentary, historical essay, and science fiction, the artist readdresses her work’s visual and textual elements in the form of a visual essay.
Built in 1931, Haus Atlantis in Bremen is a combination of patron Ludwig Roselius’ vision to restore the German racial identity by resuming the glory of ancient times, and Bernhard Hoetger’s expressionist, symbolist, and monumental architecture.
In Tlilli, in Tlapalli
Writing about Josh T. Franco’s work “In Tlilli, In Tlapalli: Three Tejanos in Red and Black,” Rotem Rozental follows the migration and reincarnation of individuals, colors, ideas, and legacies between New York City and Marfa, TX.
Two Point Perspective (part II): the Dialogical Exchange
In the second part of his essay analysing Akram Zaatari’s 2013 work “Letter to a Refusing Pilot,” Noah Simblist addresses a previous work by the artist that involved a conversation with filmmaker Avi Mograbi. Simblist is reading this work through the prism of dialogical exchange, referencing Grant Kester’s definition of “dialogical art,” as well as Ella Shohat’s observations on the identity politics of Mizrachi or Arab Jews.
Nuances of Belonging #5
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography
Pleasures of the other flesh
A painter who has internalized the Western Orientalist gaze, a minor artist given recognition as lip service to the British Indian community, or one who offers a sharp, complex, subversive outlook on identity, society, and sexuality? Bar Yerushalmi writes for Tohu about Indian-born painter Bhupen Khakhar's retrospective at the Tate Modern.
Drawing Reaction #3
Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to exhibitions, specific works, and art events. A new column at Tohu.
Homonyms
Hagai Ulrich on the homonyms in Yossi Breger's last show, on the relations between single words and the continuum, and on the idea of the abstract whole.
Two Point Perspective (part I): Letter to a Refusing Pilot
In the summer of 1982, during Israel’s incursion into Southern Lebanon, a story swirled around the port town of Saida that acquired mythological flourishes: One of the Israeli fighter jets that were sent to the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh, aborted its mission to bomb a school building, its pilot dropping the bombs into the sea instead. In a text for Tohu Magazine, that will be published in 3 parts, Noah Simblist dives into Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari’s work, Letter to a Refusing Pilot, instigated by this true story.
Nuances of Belonging #4
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography
Drawing Reaction #2
Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to exhibitions, specific works, and art events. A new column at Tohu.
A Guide for the Perplexed
Merhav Yeshoron writes about the words in Yossi Breger's last solo show, and those absent from it.
The Censored Chapter
What is it about a book that makes it a metaphor for the subject? Why do we want to identify with a book, to become a book? Liran Razinsky writes for Tohu about the fetishistic aspect of books and the relationship of books to the subject and the human body, as represented in “Bi-bli-o-logia: The Book as Body,” an exhibition at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art.
You are not Nervous, but You Should Be
In a tale full of suspense, surveillence, interrogation, secret meetings, and covert conversations, artist Tea Tupajić describes the 2-year process of devising a new performance work in Tel Aviv, which involved Mossad and Shin Bet officers. A new essay in Tohu Magazine: we recommend reading it in one sitting.
The Present in Drag and Drop: On the 9th Berlin Biennale
“Welcome to the post-contemporary,” say the DIS collective, curators of the 9th Berlin Biennale, with the hospitality of border control. Michal B. Ron shares her impressions of the biennial in a new critique for Tohu Magazine.
Upon Emergent Occasions
Using 21st Century representational technologies, Brooklyn-based artist Carla Gannis tells stories through a “digital looking glass”, where reflections on power, sexuality, marginalization, and agency emerge. She is fascinated by digital semiotics and the situation of identity in the blurring contexts of the real and the virtual.
Available in Audio
Afrofuturism and Arabfuturism: Reflections of a Present-day Diasporic Reader
Writing a review of a recent publication on Afrofuturism for Tohu Magazine has led Lama Suleiman to explore the still-nascent concept of Arabfuturism and its potential relevance to the discourse on Arab and Palestinian cultural production.
Drawing Reaction
Revital Lessick offers quick drawings in reaction to exhibitions, specific works, and art events. A new column at Tohu.
The Presence of Works
Michal B. Ron looks for eggs and feathers in Marcel Broodthaers's retrospective at MoMA
Nuances of Belonging #3
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography
Deviations from The Script: on Michael Portnoy’s "Relational Stalinism – The Musical"
“If, as William Burroughs has written, language is a virus from outer space, then Portnoy might come from a planet where dyspraxia is the common, acceptable mode of being.” Noam Toran attended Michael Portnoy’s performance at the Witte de With, and spoke with WdW’s director, Defne Ayas. He shares his insights on Tohu Magazine.
Bio-Bibliography
Can one bypass the fact that Roee Rosen, through his writing, manufactures his art as a closed system? Can one approach his art from different perspectives? Alma Mikulinsky writes about Rosen’s mid-career retrospective at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Con-Temporary Art
What does the "con" in con-temporary art suggest? Saadi Nikro discusses the theme of con-temporaneity through the works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, MUVART and Walid Raad
An Expert Testimony
In Eyal Weizman’s new book, the reader joins the author as he hovers over contested territories in the Middle East, follows him as he traces the histories, ideologies, slippery borders, technologies, and narratives involved in the State-inflicted marginalization and displacement of the Bedouin inhabitants of the Negev desert, in Southern Israel. Rotem Rozental reviews “The Conflict Shoreline,” as well as Weizman’s methodology of forensic visual culture research.
Nuances of Belonging #2
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography
Playing dead
“The ability to study the world through empirical observations and to reach conclusions regarding the nature of reality has completely changed the way we experience the world around us.” Bar Yerushalmi on art and the science of consciousness at the exhibition “States of mind: Tracing the edge of consciousness,” showing now at the Wellcome Collection in London.
Conversation Piece #2 - Rabia Salfiti
Michel Nassar in conversation with Rabia Salfiti on travelling, meditation, propaganda and martyrdom
When the Angel of History Plays with Fire
Producing some of the wittiest artistic pranks in sculptures, installations, photography, and video works, in an ever more pompous art world, Fischli/Weiss have always advocated wild thinking. Michal B. Ron writes about the duo's major retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim.
Apocalypse Yesterday
The Dome of the Rock – that golden, volatile rock of contention – is at the center of an exhibition at the Bezalel Photography Gallery. Noa Hazan writes for Tohu about the exhibition and about the visual research that has preceded it, which involved studying hundreds of photographs of the site from the last 150 years, and suggested new terms for looking at its visual representations.
Capitalist Realism: Then and Now?
In the current post-Occupy disillusionment, where the art world is dominated by commercial interests, could the term “Capitalist Realism” offer new strategy for change? Alma Mikulinsky reviews ARTMargins’s special issue on Capitalist Realism.
The Artist’s Gesture and Long Live the Messiah
How different can two painting exhibitions be? Danny Yahav Brown on shows by Amir Nave and Yitzhak Livneh at Sommer Contemporary Art.
A Particular Shade of Red
A play of accuracy and doubt, Walid Raad’s MoMA retrospective manifests the artist’s distinctive way of relating the affects of war. Naomi Lev visited and took the walkthrough
Nuances of Belonging #1
Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography
Under Construction
How should the Athens Biennale be shaped when everything in Greece is in flux? Christos Paridis on the fifth and the sixth Athens Biennales - a 2-year artistic-political-social project.
Conversation Piece #1 - Haitham (Charles) Haddad
Michel Nassar in conversation with Haitham (Charles) Haddad on his work process and his take on gender, fashion, religion and technology.
Glimpses of an Interview
Having found out that the renowned art historian and philosopher, Georges Didi-Huberman, was coming to Tel Aviv University to give a keynote lecture, we asked Michal Sapir, the translator of his recently published book in Hebrew, to invite him to give an interview for Tohu Magazine.
Kazymir Malewicz: The Black Square is 100 Years Old
How many artists today set a goal for themselves to live by their ideal of Art in the face of eternity rather than the community? Tamar Getter returns to Malewicz's Black Square
Stealing from a Thief
What did Michal BarOr do with the Pandora’s Box A. has left on her doorstep? Yair Barak describes the circles of guilt engendered by BarOr’s work, A Non-Private Collection, about a stolen suitcase full of photographs, with hope at the bottom.
Black Box
Ferry, terminal, the beach, a hotel room, a border crossing – each one of these bureaucratic instances is exposed as an illusion. Danny Yahav reviews Ohad Meromi’s show, Resort.
The Chosen People - a Small Guide to a Big Revolution
"The resolution of the occupation is obviously not going to happen right now, but there are a lot of things that might happen very soon. The question is where to start.” The Yes Men’s Jacques Servin (aka Andy Bichlbaum) in conversation with Maayan Sheleff, following his recent visit to Jerusalem.
No Tricks, No Scams. Marcel Broodthaers at the Fridericianum, Kassel
Did this year’s posthumous attempts at exhibiting Marcel Broodthaers's work rise to the challenge? Would his future retrospective at MoMA? Michal B. Ron is tackling these questions and their inherent paradox.
Fireflies
Inside and outside, secular and sacred, blindness and sight; ideas which emerge from analytical, non-seductive painting. Danny Yahav Brown writes about windows and stained-glass in Maya Gold’s show.
Jossef Krispel: Istanbul
A sneak peek into Jossef Krispel's drawing book, made during the artist's two month stay in Istanbul last summer
The Metabolic Age, or How Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos Predicted the Internet with an Egg
Could an egg-shaped artwork have predicted the internet? Alma Mikulinsky on “The Metabolic Age,” curated by Chus Martínez at Museo del Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
ManApparatus*
How does the tool, the instrument, change from an object to a work of art? How does it cancel itself (as an industrial object) and acquire new identity and meaning? Aim Deuelle Luski on the idea of ManApparatus and on the digi-image, following Matan Mittwoch’s show at the Dvir Gallery.
Tales of the Dead
Emily Jacir’s and Jumana Manna’s shows, both now on view in London, invite viewers to an encounter with opposing strategies for dealing with the limitations of archived memory. Bar Yerushalmi on the two shows.
What I learned from the Gramsci Monument
Thomas Hirschhorn with afterthoughts on the “Gramsci Monument”, an installation at a city housing project in the South Bronx from 2013. This was the fourth and last in Hirschhorn’s series of “monuments” dedicated to major writers and thinkers
Large format, small text (for Hilla Becher)
In a long overdue encounter with Hilla and Bernd Becher’s photographic grid Yair Barak discovered that his intellectual, rigorous experience as a viewer of the works has become spiritual experience. Why has that happened, and is the genomic map of Israeli typological photography indeed close to its German counterpart, or rather the American one? Reflections and insights following the departure of Hilla Becher.
Great Crescent: Art and Agitation in the 1960s – Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
“We are art terrorists,” announced Katō Yasuhiro, who headed the Zero Dimension group in the 1960s. The declaration accurately represented the Zeitgeist and the volatile atmosphere opposite the political establishment, as well as the art establishment, which has pervaded Japan in the 1960s. Ayelet Zohar on an exhibition surveying the avant-garde in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan during that period.
The Gardener, the Farmer, and the Urban Vegetable Grower
The Agro-Art exhibition, curated by Tali Tamir at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art earlier this year, explored local agriculture’s representation in contemporary art. This essay expands the discussion on the difference between gardening and agriculture and focuses on the relationships between agriculture, territory, and biography.
The Land of Widows
Doris Salcedo addresses the collective trauma related to totalitarian regime in Colombia. Gabriela Vainsencher writes about the artist’s first American retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City
Messages in Bottles: Impressions from the 14th Art Biennial in Istanbul
The opening days of the 14th art biennial in Istanbul were haunted by a child’s ghost, three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who had drowned during his fatal journey, fleeing Syria. Michal B. Ron on the Istanbul Biennial
A Work within a Work: On Robert Irwin’s "Excursus: Homage to the Square3" at Dia Beacon
Early in the summer of 2015, Robert Irwin returned to Dia:Beacon to erect an installation he has created in 1998, in a location where he himself designed both the building and its surroundings. However, the new reincarnation of his installation, Excursus, reveals more than Irwin’s long history of visual exploration.
Boy with a Camera
In 2008-2009 David Reeb documented Ni'lin's struggle against the construction of the Separation Fence. In this short text he focuses on one of his paintings that came out of this activity
On Color and Other Spaces
Color space is a specific way of organizing colors which facilitates the display and presentation of color through analog and digital media. This visual essay will not discuss color theory but rather how color is transformed into an object or, more precisely, into a form.
In Conversation: Hilla Toony Navok, Eitan Ben Moshe, and Leah Abir
In preparation for the exhibition "Releasing a Butterfly," at Alon Segev Gallery in Tel Aviv
Tohu is an independent online art magazine based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and published in Hebrew, Arabic and English
