Turbulent nature transpiring indoors, sharks swimming amid hand-painted reef sculptures, fish trying to swim against the current only to find themselves advancing backwards—Keren Gueller presents materials from the Toronto Aquarium. In her video and sculpture installation, the ocean, one of the last remaining patches of wild virgin nature on the planet, is inserted in a gigantic jar and served to visitors to the site in chewy, accessible, non-threatening slices.

The predator shark floats in the water, threatening nobody. There is no trace of the monster from horror movies, of animal instincts. It is passive like the tourists around it, who move on a conveyor belt that transports them from one attraction to another, to marvel at the absolute control, at nature domesticated and arranged for their own pleasure.
The reverence felt by an individual facing nature has reversed. Man no longer stands trembling, marveling at the infinity of the sea, the size of the waves, the giant mythical water creatures; he is now facing the whale’s skeleton suspended from the ceiling as a decoration, alluding to the hunting trophies owned by people who had to face the forces of nature and other tangible dangers. The eye that fears the shark’s prominent fin—a small black triangle that signifies danger—is now watching it from above, from below, and from the sides, realizing the power of perspective to change the way we perceive horror, the way we try to interpret the world.

The reality in the aquarium appears fabricated, so much so that it is hard to believe that these are not manipulated photographs. Gueller explores the language of the commercial setting, employing physical means to disrupt the image, which is distorted in the first place. Like the aquarium, the installation disrupts scale—not only between the human body and the animal, but also between the animal and the structure in which it is domesticated—probing how far reality can be stretched and still remain recognizable.

Lali Fruheling creates humans from chemical substances. Using silicone, she replicates the human body with virtuosity, while exploring what went wrong in the sculpting process. In Double Ana, she duplicated her residency fellow, performance artist Ana Wild, whose body and presence are a significant part of her art. Is it at all possible to duplicate Ana?

Fruheling’s sculptures exist in-between reality and fantasy: between breast implants and silicone sex toys, on the one hand, and hyper-realistic sculptures, on the other; between the statues of politicians and soccer players in wax museums, striving to perpetuate a heroic moment in time, and the studio at Artport, where a banal moment of silence and a cigarette is immortalized. Which moment is more real? And what happens when you try to reproduce it?

The attempt to duplicate the same figure twice is similar to the impossible attempt to enter the same river twice—the river, the one immersing in its waters, and the duplicated figure are in perpetual, swift transformation, neither stoppable nor fathomable. The days that passed between the castings, the memory of suffocation under the silicone, the disfigurations of the material and the interruptions to reality all penetrate the sculpture. One Ana leans on the other Ana, supporting her. Where does the material end and Ana begin, and where does Ana end and Lali begin?

With infinite patience, Fruheling weaves one eyelash after the other, drawing pores and “applying” nail varnish. But her sculptures—always of people close to her, always attempting to capture their essence and not only their external appearance—are only almost hyperrealistic. She seeks distortions and flaws, does not fear mistakes, and embraces the imperfection of the sculpture, the imperfection of life.

When the afternoon approaches, and the sun’s scorching rays soften, I emerge from my shady hiding place and go out into the field to gather my herd straying and staring at the meadow. With a low, continuous whistle I gradually notice them, scattered along the wide yellow plain. They move in my direction hesitantly, their gaze shrouded in guilt, but filled with curiosity. They stop at some distance from me, ready and alert. I approach them one by one, caressing their joints, checking the integrity of their body parts, looking for loose protrusions and projections.

Tomer Dekel assembles a new world from former playground swings, a universe which conceals the potential of play and violence embodied in them. The swings change their shape and character—a horse inviting one to gallop forward or a point of balance between two flying bodies; a machine that strives to soar, or a Viking ship, carried on waves to distant places, carried by hands to be used to ram gates and penetrate new worlds.

The movement of the swing is limited, but it still takes us to other places, liberating us, if only momentarily, from the state of stasis in which we find ourselves. It moves up and down—from the corporeal to the spiritual world, forward and back—from the present to the future, and back, offering a glimpse into other possibilities, but ultimately leaving us in the same place. Dekel reinstates the rotting scraps of wood with new powers. Sanding, sawing, and reassembling, he allows them to rediscover the delicate quality concealed in release, helping them find the place to which they aspire.

In Suddenly, Everything was Different!, three women are walking in the city at night, talking. The city, which is heard but not seen, grows miraculous and mythical around them: they come across a river, toss a coin which remains suspended mid-air, turn a beer can into a snake, test the limits of time. They tell each other stories derived from Jewish mythology, from a National Geographic film, from Hannah Arendt, Orson Welles, and the post-punk girl band the Slits; they witness inexplicable phenomena, seek redemption, momentarily perhaps even finding it.

The women’s voices are heard through the walls of Ana Wild’s sound and space work, moving between the multiple loudspeakers, drifting in the space, infusing it with movement. The audience sits around the same table from which the women’s conversation begins, a table that relates us and separates us from each other at the same time, being both what we have in common and what is keeping us apart.

In a world used to believing in eyesight and often dismissing hearsay, Wild introduces the possibilities inherent in listening, examining whether the sonic space, experienced exclusively through hearing, is the space where other possibilities can exist, where miracles can occur.

From the instability attributed to those who hear voices, through the divine voice that appears in the Bible, to sound effects in films and radio plays, we doubt the voices and trust them at the same time. We rely only partly on a sensory space, which leaves room for the imagination, allowing us to believe even in what we did not see with our own eyes. We find many ways to explain inexplicable phenomena—from divine intervention to big data, from coincidences to scientific discoveries. Wild introduces the possibility of a miracle as a paradigm shift, when suddenly, everything is different.

Nardeen Srouji manipulates familiar mundane objects, reversing their meaning and creating a new, agitated world that reflects the way she experiences reality. Under her hand, iconic Palestinian artforms that bear historical meaning, such as embroidery and music, become tools for interpreting the present from a different angle. Her objects combine movement and transformation, forcing the viewer to change position and pace, and challenge the comfortable stance and the status quo in which they transpire.

Turning to the traditional red cross-stitch embroidery—the most renowned of Palestinian embroidery techniques—Srouji uses different materials and sizes to construct and unravel the embroidery and its symbolism in countless ways, until it becomes an abstract sign. What starts with a soft thread and a decorative marking on fabric, becomes a warning sign, a stop sign. The red band strip of queue barriers, routinely intended to mark fine borders, such as at the entrance to a museum or a government institution, is deconstructed before our very eyes in a dance movement. Playing in the background is the 1938 Egyptian mega-hit “Ya Habibi…” by renowned singer Asmahan, who was killed six years later under mysterious circumstances.

In Border Dance, to the sounds of the refrain, “Come my love, follow me, look what became of me,” the meaning of the border and its defenders is challenged. The absurd attempt to grasp the boundaries crumbles to the sounds of the song, raising questions about the murders of women that remain unanswered, and undermining the perception of art as something that must be guarded and protected, kept away from the crowd and the crowd away from it.

The Rockefeller Museum, inaugurated in Jerusalem in 1935, was the first building intended as a museum of antiquities in Mandatory Palestine. The building is considered an architectural gem in the city’s landscape and a landmark in the history of local modern architecture. Designed by renowned mandate architect, Austen St. Barbe Harrison, the Museum fuses Western and Eastern architectural traditions with architectural innovations: its plan resembles that of medieval European castles; its central halls call cathedral interiors to mind; the design of the domes and arches was drawn from Islamic architecture; and the inner courtyard, with the pool at its heart, is influenced by the Alhambra Palace in Granada. Ten bas reliefs by British artist Eric Gill, installed in the inner courtyard, represent the cultures that left their mark on this land: from the Canaanites through Roman and Byzantine culture to Islam. The reliefs, which represent the cultures that existed here as historical strata, surround a water pool in which Gill installed a head-shaped fountain. The cyclical movement of water symbolizes the cyclical movement of time.

Like the fusion of different cultural eras in the building, Maayan Elyakim’s works, too, bring ideas and images from different places and times together, introducing chains of surprising encounters between images, mysticism, myths, and crafts. In this work, Elyakim continues to develop his interest in the relationship between sculpture and photography. He subtly points out links between time and memory, looking inward and backward to produce a new object, which encapsulates that which preceded it, and possibly hints at what will follow. The fountain’s head also stands for a beating heart, for a spring of flowing water, relating to the studio where Elyakim worked this year.