galleries

The Virtual Musrara Museum is an initiative of Musrara, The Naggar School of Art and Society, and Musrara Galleries to have an additional display space in the school’s historic building in the Musrara neighborhood. The museum is a unique platform for presenting contemporary exhibitions in a virtual architectural space based on the school’s historic building plan. The museum offers an interactive and independent wandering experience. The virtual exhibition Smoking Mountain presents photographs and video works documenting an exceptional meeting which took place in the winter of 2019–20. It now seems like a different time, right before the Corona virus altered our lives and our existence on this planet, and the possibilities for face-to-face encounters between people from different countries – let alone continents – were abruptly diminished. A team of five representatives from the Naggar School, we left Jerusalem for the United States on what we believed to be a formative journey of growth and change. We were to be hosted by Native American groups in Oregon and Washington, within the framework of the Communities Connecting Heritage (CCH) program, a remarkable international initiative dedicated to preserving the cultural legacies of endangered communities around the world and to forming connections among international organizations. The Naggar School was the first educational institution in Israel selected to participate in the CCH. On the American side, the meeting was arranged by Wisdom of the Elders, a Portland-based organization for the preservation the area’s Native American cultural traditions. Participants: Asaf Alboher, Kunu Bearchum, Tim Keenan Burgess, Shirly Goffer, Harvest Moon Howell, Avi Sabag, Chesga Jackson, Duane Lane, Yali Reichert, Dana Shahar LAWETLAT’LA – The Smoking Mountain Exhibition was created within the framework of “The Hero’s Journey of Transformation” project as part of Communities Connecting HeritageSM, a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by World Learning. Photo: Asaf Alboher  

The exhibition “The Body Alone” observes the body as it emerged during the so-called “ongoing COVID-19 crisis.” As per an emergency call issued by the government and health authorities, in the name of public order and preservation of public health, the human body was requested to self-isolate, shut itself in, shelter at home, resulting in uncanny anxieties. The exhibition spans sculptural and cinematic works alongside archival materials from the history of photography which correspond with texts by philosophers and psychoanalysts written during Corona virus times, in an attempt to lend meaning to the body in this period. Curator: Ori Drumer Artists: Chen Cohen, Aya Zaiger, Ernesto Levy, Liat Livni, Mia Gourvitch, Hadas Ophrat, Tova Lotan Image: Hadas Ophrat  

In the annual exhibition in memory of artist Morel Derfler (1956–2001), the participating artists correspond with works from his series of photographs Urban Vegetation created almost four decades ago—responding to his attempt to create “forced nature” from rootless branches he photographed on the roof of his house. They observe the outside from their domestic interiors, examining the power relations and reciprocities between man and the surrounding nature in various ways. At times, nature infiltrates and invades the work; at others, it is the work of art that spawns it. Curator: Almog Gez Artists: Boaz Aharonovitch, Davi Barell, Neta Cones, Yuval Naor, Yali Reichert, Gustavo Sagorsky, Yaron Rosner, Maya Zehavi Image: Boaz Aharonovitch

The exhibition “Natural Glitch” addresses the desire to document and preserve the outside world, which we call “nature,” and the failure to realize that passion. The participating artists propose different ways to frame outdoor nature and introduce it indoors, but their attempt to fixate the external world encounters countless obstacles, and the resulting images are all distorted, whether blinded by the light of the photographic flash, gnawed upon by fungi, turned upside down, or broken. The exhibition examines the attempt to represent nature through the very failure of the act of representation. At no pointed are viewers lured by the illusion which programs such as Planet Earth attempt to create, since the works present things as they are. Curator: Michal BarOr Artists: Dana Levy, Maya Perry, Avishai Platek, Hadas Satt, Miri Segal Image: Avishai Platek