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From the press: The Face of Anxiety

Date: 01/07/2009

BOOKS & ART/AAREZ,
By Dr. Ktzia Alon

 A book that hasn't received due attention this year is the catalogue of the exhibition "HeartQuake". In recent years, the "Museum on the Seam" has become one of the most important museums in Israel: it exhibits contemporary international art, linking it intelligently to a committed social agenda. The museum defines itself as a socio-political contemporary art museum, and it succeeds in standing up to the complex parameters that such a definition poses. Every exhibition is accompanied by a colorful chromo large dimensional catalogue, which includes, aside from all the images in the exhibition, excellent texts, some of which are published for the first time in Hebrew. The catalogue thus accentuates the link between the art world and the contemporary intellectual worlds, and becomes a coherent object of appearance and words.

The catalogue opens with an article by the curator and artistic director of the Museum, Raphie Etgar, who refers to all the works in the exhibition. Following is a text by the editor of the articles, Nitzan Rotem, titled "The Face of Anxiety." This is where every "usual" exhibition catalogue ends. But here it is just a starting point to a long intellectual voyage awaiting us: Voltaire's Poem on the" Disaster at Lisbon" takes up four pages, followed by impressive articles, full length or summarized, such as: "Fear of Small Numbers" by Arjun Appadurai, "A Journey into the Land of Fear", by 'Ha'Aretz' journalist, Lilly Galili, an excerpt from "The Threatened" by Sigmund Freud, the important essay, "The World and the Home" by Homi K. Bhabha, Aviezer Ravitzky's essay "The Land of Israel: Yearning and Anxiety in Israeli Literature", excerpts from Toni Morrison's "Playing in the Dark", and finally – Steven Feinstein's enlightening article, " Artists and Genocide in Rwanda", which addresses the ever relevant questions of representation of horror in art. All articles appear in both Hebrew and English.

On the dark cover of the catalogue is an interesting image of the Polish artist Adam Adach, who is presented in the exhibition, taken from a work titled "Wilk 1, Wilk 2 (Wolf 1 and Wolf 2) - Poland)".

Dr. Ktzia Alon is head of Gender Studies at Bet Berl College and an art curator.

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