הטבע נתן מוזיאון – אני נתתי את הגוף

Nature Gave a Museum – I Gave the Body

Curator: Zeela Kotler Hadari
Ein Hod Gallery
18 March – 9 June 2023

Artists respond to the sculpture biennials held in the olive grove at the foot of Ein Hod during the 1990s. The exhibition revisits a fascinating yet largely forgotten chapter in the history of Israeli sculpture. Participating artists: Avraham Eilat, Yael Balaban, Roni Ben Zvi, Dror Goldberg, Omer Goldberg, Tamir Chen, Mark Yashaev, Tuvia Yuster, Peny Hess Yassour, Nechama Levendel, Hadar Mitz, Boaz Noy, Iris Sintra, Sima Slonim, Nardin Sarouji, Gad Cherni, Uri Katzenstein, Alina Rom Cohen, Noa Rich, Amit Sha'al, and Shlomi Schwartzberg.

The 1980s and 1990s marked the golden age of Israeli outdoor sculpture. The four Ein Hod Sculpture Biennials, held consecutively between 1990 and 1997, attracted thousands of visitors and established Ein Hod as a site that challenged and expanded the boundaries of sculpture. Dozens of Israeli and international artists participated, installing sculptures in the natural landscape for a limited period before they were dismantled. The biennials were curated by Meir Aharonson, Dr. Micha Levin, and Naomi Aviv, and initiated by the artist Roni Ben Zvi.

Marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the artists' village, this contemporary exhibition offers a renewed reading of the sculptural discourse that unfolded through the biennials. It traces a trajectory from large-scale sculpture that regarded the public landscape as a museum exhibition space—echoing Meir Aharonson's assertion that "nature has built us a museum"—through site-specific sculptural practices that responded to the qualities of the landscape and, in Micha Levin's words, asked: "Where is sculpture better situated—in the open landscape or within the exhibition space?" The exhibition culminates in conceptual sculptural practices that return to the artist's own body, exemplified by Uri Katzenstein's tattoo project created for the 1997 Ein Hod Sculpture Biennial. For this work, Katzenstein embedded tattoo needles into the trunk of a tree and used them to tattoo the image of the "Climbing Double" onto twelve figures from the Israeli art world, including the curators Naomi Aviv and Yigal Zalmona, who famously remarked at the time: "I gave the body."

Revisiting the Ein Hod Sculpture Biennials raises broader questions about Israeli sculpture and the relationships between nature, object, and body. The exhibition presents objects in a variety of media and materials alongside two-dimensional works, sound, and video installations. It also reunites sculptures originally exhibited in the 1990s biennials that have survived the passage of time.

As part of the exhibition program, the event "Nature Gave a Museum" was held in collaboration with the Hof HaCarmel Regional Council, featuring workshops, performances, and site-specific interventions in the gallery and throughout the public spaces of the artists' village.

The closing event of the exhibition series, "Biennale of Intimacy," took place in Ein Hod on Friday, 9 June 2023. Dedicated to curator Naomi Aviv, it presented archival materials from the unrealized Fifth Sculpture Biennial and featured Ilona Ariel together with artists who had participated in the fourth and fifth biennials.