Picks

Starting a few days after October 7, 2023, the Israeli art world began to take a central place in the reverberation of the events, demanding the return of the hostages, commemorating the dead, participating in the personal and collective work of grief, and offering balm and resilience.
Over 20 books and catalogs relating to the war were published in the passing year. Some deal directly with stories and images, and some try to make room for the gaps in the traumatic stories. The books selected in this recommendation responded as an enveloping circle. They turn our gaze at the objects left behind: the facades of the houses, the gardens, the land of what used to be called the "Gaza envelope."
In Silent Witnesses Andi Arnovitz paints objects in watercolors, carefully collected from press photographs and her imagination. Nivi Lehavi collects plants among the destroyed houses in Kibbutz Be'eri, documenting them, and placing them in the Herzliya Museum. The accompanying book of the exhibition, A Plant-Bed of Be'eri, tells the story of the people behind gardens, in thin lines.
Red South by Arik Kilemnik, is a box containing three concertinas in screenprint, combining the red, black, and blue into a gloomy and coded political lament. And last, Nir Oz: Flowers of Grief and Redemption, is a comprehensive index of flowers in the kibbutz's botanical garden together with the facades of the houses, weaved with conversations. Alon Botboul and Eden Fineberg‑Sabah create a mosaic of histories, grief, and lives.

06.10.2024