New exhibits at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art focus on the power art plays in times of crisis.
The multidisciplinary works display our daily life and all the feelings, experiences and stories that we haven’t been able to put into words since that horrific black Sabbath day.
There are a number of exhibits currently on display – and all show how local artists are reckoning with the shock of our situation.
Some of the works take your breath away and simultaneously make you hold your breath.
The works are colorful and colorless. Some are detailed and others abstract. They are poignant and strange.
There are paintings of the Nova festival. And kibbutz life -- before and after. Video art of stick figures signalling for help. A bronze cast of a woman cradling her child on a deathly ground. Worrying cartoonish symbols of war.
Art is often used to help digest past crises.
But October 7th is still very much a present-day crisis.
As a society, we are not who we were on October 6th.
As one artist says, these are not post-trauma artworks because we are still in trauma.
Indeed. The war is ongoing. The hostages are still being held hostage. The reservists are still in reserves. The army is still the army. The survivors are still surviving. The mourning are still mourning.
This art won’t make you feel better. But it does serve as a conduit for our emotions: the art is restless, turbulent, agitated; it is filled with guilt, anger, dread and sadness; some of the art glimmers with hope.
All of the exhibits giving artistic interpretation to life in Israel now, will make you think and self-reflect.
If you want to leave the museum on a happier note: the impressionist art is uplifting and soothing for the soul. And the beach chairs installation is whimsical and entertaining.
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