This exhibition reviews the  concept of a fence / border as a barrier in the local landscape.

The representations and meanings of the partition are revealed in different ways, in accordance with the different insights of the artists participating in the exhibition. Each of them presents the fence from a different angle, from the perspective that employs the entire work. The exhibition thus offers five different aspects of the fence / boundary: the fence as an existential threat, the fence as semantics and interdisciplinary boundaries, a fence representing social status, and the hidden border that expresses a yearning for unity with nature, and nature versus nature.

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Hannah Naveh: The Social Vision

The fence, as a social function, is the dividing line between the stranger’s sense of alienation and his unfulfilled desire to be part of the social landscape.

Naveh displays fences related to the landscapes of her childhood, especially the view of the ugly prefab houses of the immigrants' neighborhood of Gav Yam. To these fences, portrayed in their full misery - as they were in reality, in the immigrant neighborhoods of the early years of the state - she felt deeply connected.

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The works are drawn on small pieces of cloth torn from the dead mother's sheets, like an act of tearing a mourners shirt. These pieces of cloth portray her childhood home, and images from the immediate surroundings - the courtyard, the gate and the alleys of the neighborhood.

At the same time, other fences appear in the "Land of Na'an" series, which was painted in 2003. Most of the series' subjects rely on views the kibbutz. Fences are stretched carefully over nostalgic landscape paintings, fences that are a metaphor for the deep rift in Israeli society. Here, too, is the perspective of the refugees on the other side of the fence, watching the kibbutz which symbolizes the Land of Israel, the aspiration to integrate into it.

 

Irit Levin, "Landscape: Four Fences and Craving", from the exhibition brochure, The Art Workshop Gallery, Yavne, 2008