The Other Sea

The exhibition “The Other Sea” deals with the otherness embedded within the “local sea”: the feminine, the transcendental, the ethnic, and the national. Since the crossing of the Red Sea – that mythological crossing that first brought the people of Israel from exile to redemption – the sea has been experienced as a means rather than as an end. Eretzisraeli painting gazed upon the sea through an Orientalist lens: this romantic sea was planned in principle as an expanse for nationalist education. Its characteristics turned it into a kind of mirror that drew between its waves the figure of the mythological “tsabar”. “The Other Sea” is “the sea of tears,” “the black sea,” and a sea of pollution and waste. The sea displayed in works by 28 artists in this exhibition is not the romantic, kitsch, sweet sea that we have become accustomed to using. The other sea reveals the sea to be an expanse that differentiates between Jews and Arabs, army bases and civilian beaches, glamour and poverty, refugees and displacement. In this sense the sea acts as a site of hope and exploded illusion, a collapsed beach of promises.

Participants: Adi Brande, Aliza Auerbach, Anisa Ashkar, Arik Miranda, Assaf Evron, Avraham Eilat, Dafna Shalom, Dana Levy, Elyasaf Kowner, Eric Sultan, Farid Abu Shakra, Gaston Zvi Ickowicz, Hilla Ben Ari, Khen Shish, Mosh Kashi, Oded Shimshon, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Roi Kuper, Ron Amir, Shai Azoulay, Shula Keshet, Simcha Shirman, Tal Shochat, Tamir Sher, Yair Barak, Yehezkel Lazarov, Yochai Matos, Yoram Blumenkrantz, Yoram Kupermintz.

Gallery talk with the exhibition curators will take place on Sat. May 26th at 12:00

The Other Sea
The exhibition The Other Sea deals with the otherness embedded within the “local sea”. The Other Sea is arranged around four central coordinates: the sea as a “feminine” wash basin; the sea as a place of refugees and displacement; the sea as dumping ground for pollutants and waste; and “the black sea.”
The feminine is linked to water in many varied ways. While the masculine is identified with the solid base provided by the land, the feminine is identified with the elusive fluidity characterized by water. The feminine is seen as unpredictable, irrational, and unaware, identified with the stormy and whimsical sea. The conquest and surrender of the sea is the conquest of the feminine. A different part of the exhibition relates to the sea as place of refugees and displacement, giving visibility to the liminal life teeming along its shores. This is a sea of broken promises. The desire to look upon it reveals the hidden wishes of the figures who gaze at it, wanting to be freed from their life. In this context the sea acts as site of shattered hopes and illusions. Another theme woven into the exhibition exposes the sea as site of pollution. The waste: from sewage pouring into the sea to military detritus buried in the depths, define the sea as an overflowing public toilet. This symbolic violence shows the sea to be a great absorbing hole, which can supposedly digest and hold every human caprice. “The black sea” sends its inlets to two opposed extremes: transcendental creation on the one hand, and man-made apocalyptic vision on the other. The point of connection between sky and sea becomes the point of connection between life and death. The meeting point creates the “sublime” that is so often linked to the sea.
The fear of the other as embodied in the “feminine”, the “divine”, the “sublime” and the “other” breaks between the waves of the sea and finds varied artistic expression in the works shown in the exhibition, works that offer a “deep dive” into the darker places of the Israeli experience.

Dalya Markovich and Ktzia Alon, Curators