The Movers: Israeli Art in the Third Millennium

Israeli art from the turn of the millennium is the work of movers: artists who have relocated from one country to another, more by choice than by force, and who have thus beheld and refabricated an alternative image of Israel from a perspective tied to wider transnational concerns. The Movers invites readers to a series of engagements with contemporary Israeli artworks that have grown their international presence in recent years: among them, the complex video-art productions of Yael Bartana, the ambitious sculptural installations of Gal Weinstein, the socially critical paintings of Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, the surrealist, fabricated archives of Roee Rosen, the mystical sound drawings of Yehudit Sasportat, and the subversive home-movies of Guy Ben-Ner. Noam Gal explores the roots of these pieces in the cultural and social histories of Israel, British Mandate Palestine, and the early days of the Zionist movement in Europe and North Africa to show how artists from Israel visualize their relationship to one of the most troubled landscapes in the world. Viewers can expand their perspectives on Israel, Gal suggests, by critically observing the artworks made by its inhabitants, rather than by observing the inhabitants themselves. The Movers opens a portal to appreciate these artworks as continuations of material, visual, and literary Jewish cultures before and after the founding of Zionism. Across cultural phenomena, the artistic practices Gal examines characterize a generation of artists critical of their national identity. Illustrated throughout, The Movers provides a unique lens to observe the dynamics of identification in expressions of art.

Noam Gal teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.