Eastern Skies Blush

Solo exhibition by Hinda Weiss

According to a Talmudic discussion, one day ends and the next begins “from when the sun sets, as long as the eastern face of the sky is reddened by the light of the sun.” The question regarding the beginning and ending of a day, which is crucial in the context of the beginning and ending of Shabbat, has acquired a new meaning in the past two years, when the elasticity of time seemed to have changed. The minutes and hours lost their assigned meaning and the days became one long twilight.

The COVID-19 pandemic caught the world confused and unprepared. It caught Hinda Weiss in New York in between apartments. Without a permanent place to live, in days of constantly changing plans, she found herself roaming the streets from which those who could afford it had escaped, photographing the public spaces that were changing right in front of her. Between ambulance sirens and the roar of helicopters, between the applause for the medical staff and the calls of the Black Lives Matter protest against the police, Weiss captured spontaneous events that are details of an evolving image.

Via meticulous editing, Weiss presents a video collage that connects the different times: moments of despair and moments of respite, the parks and spontaneous gatherings, movement restrictions and lockdowns. The documented image is her raw material, from which she cuts and paints, builds new scenes and creates a different, parallel, possible reality. While the common use of advanced editing technologies is to falsify reality and present it as different from what it was, Weiss’s video collages bring us closer to reality as experienced. In the exhibition she proposes an intricate view of time and transitional moments; an augmented time which allows forward and backward observation at layers of reality that take place at different times and in different places simultaneously, crystallizing to form one image.

Two years later, we still don’t know what the end of the COVID-19 crisis will look like. We have not yet gone through enough to understand how the pandemic, with its lockdowns and quarantines, has affected us, but our eye has already begun processing the data, forming a perspective, identifying the different shades of the intermediate moment, as we try to make up our mind whether this is the sunset, or maybe it is already the beginning of a new day.

Artist

Hinda Weiss
Curator

Vardit Gross
Address

Ha’Amal 8
Dates

9.12.2021 – 19.2.2022
Opening Date

Thursday, December 9th, 7.30pm
Activity Time

Wed-Thurs: 12pm – 7pm

Fri-Sat: 10am-2pm
From the catalog

Eastern Skies Blush catalog

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Glossary

“As long as the eastern face of the sky is reddened by the light of the sun setting in the west”...

Installation View

TikTok 2020

Installation view: Michael Tzur

Playing in Snow

140X190cm

Installation view: Michael Tzur

"The desert's quiet, Cleveland's cold" (left)

From the glossary:

Pancho and Lefty
The most popular song by country singer Townes Van Zandt, Pancho and Lefty was recorded in 1972 and reached the top of the charts in 1983 with Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s cover. The ballad tells the story of Lefty, a restless youth who leaves his mother in search of his fortune. He meets Pancho, a savage Mexican bandit who dies in the deserts of Mexico after Lefty betrays him. The ballad follows Lefty, who grows old alone in cheap motels in his attempts to reunite with his family and friends, who have moved on with their lives.

July 4th
American Independence Day is celebrated on the date of the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, 1776. It is customarily celebrated with fireworks, picnics, and barbecues in private homes and parks, and with red, white, and blue decorations as the colors of the American flag. The New York fireworks display is the largest in the United States, with over 22 tons of pyrotechnics exploding in the city skies. The fireworks are usually shot above the East River, with additional smaller firework displays in various parks and courtyards. The main New York fireworks display, sponsored by the Macy’s Department Store, has been broadcast live on television since 1976.

Rehearsal

Installation view: Michael Tzur

Governors Island (center)

From the glossary:

King Kong
A fictional giant monster reminiscent of a gorilla, he has appeared in numerous comics and movies in the US during the 20th century. One of the images most identified with King Kong is from a film in which the ape is seen climbing the Empire State Building, one of New York’s iconic buildings, in an attempt to uproot the skyscrapers and destroy the city. In recent years, King Kong’s character has been accused of racism, xenophobia, and reinforcing fear of the black race among white people. The temporal proximity between the Great Depression that struck the United States in 1929 and led to the migration of many workers from the southern states to the big cities, and the film’s release in 1933, only reinforced the fear of those coming from outside the familiar circle. Times of crisis, then as now, have always been moments of xenophobia.

Best Wishes

Installation view: Michael Tzur

7pm (left), 8:46 (center)

From the glossary:

7 PM
As a token of appreciation for the work of the medical personnel during the COVID-19 crisis, and following the lockdowns that left us in our homes, people around the world started going out at a fixed time every day to applaud the health-care workers. What began in the first lockdowns in Italy with drumming on pots and singing arias from operas, spread to other places in the world following the coronavirus, reached Israel as well, and became a regular ritual in New York, with its crowded buildings and streets and its multiple occupants. Every day at 7 PM, many stood at their windows and clapped. On days when people barely left their homes, 7 PM became a time of gathering, which gave rise to a sense of community and belonging.

8:46
Eight minutes and 46 seconds symbolize the police brutality associated with the murder of George Floyd. Floyd was detained and handcuffed by police in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. One of the police officers, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for many long minutes, even when the latter had already lost consciousness, causing his death. The event was filmed by passers-by, showing the detained Floyd crying helplessly “I can’t breathe,” leading to a massive wave of protests across the United States led by the Black Lives Matter movement. At the center of many of the demonstrations (aka “die-ins”), the protesters sat or lay down side by side for 8:46 minutes with hands raised. Police footage released months later indicated that the duration in question was actually 9 minutes and 29 seconds, but time in 2020 had rules of its own.

Empires

From the glossary:

The Temple of Dendur, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 1967, US President Lyndon B. Johnson received a gift from Egypt—an ancient Egyptian temple dating to the first century BCE. The temple was removed from its original location in Egypt as part of a UNESCO operation to save heritage sites that were in danger of being submerged following the construction of the Aswan High Dam. The temple was housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1970s, in a wing constructed especially for it, and features a monumental diagonal glass window, built so that the sun’s rays are scattered through it in a way that mimics the light conditions in the place from which it came. The question of who is allowed to present gifts in the name of his people, which came up regarding quite a few archeological items that found their way to the West, did not tarnish the Temple of Dendur.

Bethesda Fountain
In the heart of Central Park stands one of New York’s largest fountains, with an angel towering to a height of eight feet in its center. The neoclassical bronze sculpture is the only artwork commissioned specifically for the park, featuring the Angel of the Waters with four cherubs beneath it, representing health, purity, temperance, and peace. Designed by Emma Stebbins, the sculpture was unveiled in 1873 and became a landmark. Guitarists, skaters, and lovers regularly crowd in the terrace below. The angel holds a lily in one hand, while the other hand is spread out, either blessing the water or perhaps waiting for us to extend a hand back to it.

Angels in America
A successful 1987 play by Tony Kushner addressing the impact of AIDS on American society. The seven-hour drama was adapted as a two-part play, as well as a film and TV miniseries. At the end of the play, the characters gather under the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, and the protagonist, who is dying of AIDS, says that they have reached the most beautiful place in the world. The male nurse who accompanies him recounts the legend of the pool, whereby if anyone suffers, in body or soul, he must walk through the fountain to be healed and cleansed of pain. The fountain, they promise, will resume operation, and all the sick residents of the city will return and purge themselves in it.