The Israel Trail: Procession
2018
The Israel Trail: Procession is a large-scale joint project by artists Meirav Heiman and Ayelet Carmi, depicting a group journey along the National Israel Trail. The identity of the participants—possibly nomads, possibly survivors or refugees—is unclear since they carry no markers of affiliation or time. They advance using odd devices that prevent their feet from touching the ground, generating a peculiar, alienating movement experience between the hiker and the land. Walking becomes a strenuous acrobatic choreography alluding to either circus processions or pilgrimages wearing torture apparatuses to test their faith.
The project explores the charged relationship with the land through the contemporary rite of passage of walking the National Israel Trail, a quest deeply rooted in the Zionist ethos of conquering the land by foot. The morbid-ritual procession only externalizes the unstable, elusive, extremist dimension of the ritual. The journey, which involves great physical effort, conjures up masculine and military initiation rites of physical and mental stamina. Here, however, the convoy consists mainly of differently-aged women who resemble priestesses or warriors taking part in a protest march.
- Design: Aayal Zakin and Tali liberman
- Editing: Drorit Gur Arie
- Texts: Drorit Gur Arie, Tali Tamir, Galia Bar Or, Asaf Zeltzer
- Copies: 500
- Pages: 133
- Type of binding: hard
- Languages: English, Hebrew
- Dimensions (cm): 21x27
- Type of printing: Offset printing
- Publication: Petach Tikva Museum
- Book photography: Avi Hai
Meirav Heiman (b. 1972, Jerusalem) is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, video, and installation. She lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Heiman studied at the Midrasha School of Art (1994–1995), and later participated in a student exchange program at the School of Visual Arts, New York (1996–1997). She graduated with honors from the Department of Photography at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (1998).
Her work examines staged human situations, often drawn from personal, familial, and everyday contexts, using strategies of estrangement, humor, and exaggeration.
Heiman has presented solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Haifa Museum of Art, Noga Gallery, and Artists’ Studios Tel Aviv, and has participated in group exhibitions at major venues including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, the Israel Museum, and the Bass Museum of Art, Miami.
She is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Ministry of Culture Encouragement of Artistic Creation Prize (2008), First Prize at the “Now & After” Festival in Moscow, and the Team‑Work Award at the Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Media Art.
Since 2015, she has also been engaged in an ongoing collaboration with artist Eilat Carmi, creating joint projects in video and installation that have been exhibited in Israel and internationally."
