The “70 Years: Individual – State” exhibition presents major trends and turning points in Israeli art since the founding of the State of Israel. In the State’s first decade, the individual saw him/herself as mobilized and utterly committed to the idea of the fledgling society and the rebuilding of its old-new homeland. Nowadays, towards the end of the second decade of the 21^st century, the individual insists on his or her right to be heard and be self-fulfilled.
During the State’s first decades, the general discourse focused on the then country’s foremost national mission – immigrants’ absorption – alongside the consolidation of the sort of economy, culture, legislation, and welfare system befitting a well-managed modern state. The individual’s mobilization for the welfare of society and State is especially prominent in Israel: 10^th Anniversary album (1958), which juxtaposes the Israeli “sabra” as a “new Jew” tilling his land along with modern factories and technological innovations (such as a state of the art airplane flying over the cultivated fields of a valley). The names of the photographers are missing from this album, making the images part of a collective endeavor devoid of any individualism. In those years, the local art scene betrayed a desire for “authentic,” local creation reflecting the place’s landscape and inhabitants. Indeed, there were certain artistic currents which referenced universalistic art and strove to adopt an international idiom, but the majority of artists felt a need to create “authentic,” local, “Jewish,” or even “Canaanite” art. Be it as it may, the work of all currents bears the stamp of unmistakably localism.
The euphoria that swept Israeli society in the wake of the Six Day War brought its collective images to a peak. Paratroopers at the Western Wall, rabbi Shlomo Goren, and victory albums produced immediately after that war came to symbolize this period. However, at the same time, new defying voices started to undermine the heroic image.
The 1970s, brought with them consciousness of and demands to recognize identities hitherto publicly voiceless. Israeli collective identity began to disintegrate. Artists used personal expression to thrust their protest to the forefront. The aftermath of the Yom Kippur War marked this world-shifting turning point.
From the 1980s onwards and simultaneously with the emergence of movements representing new social sensibilities, Israeli art also underwent a change. In this period, more and more previously marginalized and unvoiced themes and groups appeared: women art, the plights of the LGBT community, and representation of ethnic minorities. Diverse ideas and idioms have become hallmark of a new social situation, in which the individual seeks personal artistic expression and society is being called to contain diversity. Thus, newcomers of all ethnicities and their progeny integrate in the art field and feel, for the first time, entitled to voice a more complex and inclusive Israeli identity, incorporating into it elements and ideas from their families’ countries of origin.
Today Israel’s art in its multiple colors, opinions and forms is an ever-changing social mosaic in the process of becoming a new identity.
Shoshana Harary Engelberg and Yael Kaufman
 
Artists participating: Andi Arnovitz, Artists Ethiopian Arts Workshop, Asad Azi, Hilla Ben Ari, Dganit Berest, Werner Braun, Zoya Cherkassky,
Nurit Jacobs-Yinon, Jack Jano, Moshe Kagan, Dany Karavan, Alex Levac, Haim Maor, Aryeh Navon, Franz (Perry) Rosenfeld, Ruth Schloss,
Nirit Takele, Michal Mamit Vorka, Meir Wachtel and David Z”ak.

Curators: MA curatorial students of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, guided by Ms. Ellen Ginton – Eddie Bilkis, Eloise Bornstein-Haddad, Miri Elzon, Ale Frejman, Shoshana Harary Engelberg, Tal Katzir, Yael Kaufman, Sarit Lazerovich, Keren Oz, Yael Peer, Ira Perelman,
Cohava Peterman-Lipschutz, Lee Rosenfeld, Galit Shaul, Ariela Shimshon, Galit Eva Smith, Miriam Vazana and Shahar Zehavi.

70 שנה: פרט - מדינה תערוכה קבוצתית פתיחה חגיגית: יום חמישי 21 ביוני 2018, בשעה 18:30