An exhibition currently at the Cincinnati Skirball Museum explores artists’ relationships to Israel through the act of “re-arting” — or manipulating — each other’s work. Five artists from Cincinnati and five from Netanya, Israel collaborated on Re-Art: The Many Faces of Israel, an interactive exhibit that celebrates 70 years of Israeli independence. The country came into existence in 1948.
“The mission was to engage these artists with their own thought processes about what Israel means to them,” says Skirball director Abby Schwartz. “But the unexpected pleasure really is the sensitive way in which they all reinterpreted each other’s work.”
The museum, which sits on the Hebrew Union College − Jewish Institute of Religion’s Clifton campus, teamed up with the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s Partnership2Gether program to select the 10 artists involved.
About five months of work bore 70 pieces that range in style from Surrealism to Realism. Each artist made one “original” work (for the Israelis, all originals were photographs) and then all were digitally re-arted by artists from the opposite country, so each Israeli artist’s work was reinterpreted by artists in Cincinnati and vice versa. But how did they incorporate the symbolic number of 70 into their process?
“It required a little extra math,” says Alan Brown, re-artist and P2G committee member. “Ten pieces of original art and 50 pieces of re-art, so that’s 60. And then each artist created one re-art from one of the artists from their own side. That gave us an additional 10, which gave us a total of 70.”
Each original piece has its own wall, where it hangs with an artist biography. Underneath the original, its six re-art counterparts are displayed anonymously. Figuring out what artist did which re-art can be challenging, but the artists’ individual styles slowly become apparent, which makes it easier to identify their creations. Viewers can also consult a pamphlet that reveals which re-art work belongs to which artist.
“It is really an opportunity to engage with artworks and to have a process of discovery, almost like a treasure hunt,” Schwartz says.
Israeli artist Smadar Barnea’s original piece is one of the most straightforward creations. Her photo portrays the beauty of Israel through the landscape of a field. Lines of grain that extend to the horizon can be interpreted as depth or longevity. Among the re-arts accompanying this landscape is one by Brown; his dreamlike interpretation depicts a barren field with a billboard that displays the original photo.
In the overall show, there are themes that arise such as the Star of David or the color blue. Cincinnati artist and graphic designer Cindy Loon created a mosaic out of photos from a recent trip to Israel. Atop the blue-hued mosaic is the Hebrew letter, Aleph, in which she superimposed the entire Hebrew alphabet.
“That blue color is all over Israel,” she says. “I really researched the symbolism behind it. It’s a very holy color and it serves as protection from evil. So I cut out all the blue in all the photographs. It could be anything — it’s water in some places and sky in some places and an Israeli flag or a Torah cover in others.”
In Loon’s piece, the delicate serifs of the Aleph quietly extend beyond the border of the collaged background. The re-arts below it involve a harmonious bunch of interpretations that include a pixelated version from Israeli artist Yehuda Yahav, and a photograph of a field with the letter repeated among it by Israeli artist Tami Suez.
Brown, who also included pictures from a trip to Israel in his surreal piece, explained that the artists had no contact prior to the project, besides the initial exchange of art.
“We wanted to be able to respond to the art itself without any bias of who the person was, what they intended or what they were thinking,” he says. “We wanted to be able to take it with a totally clean slate in terms of ideas.”
The artists virtually met during a discussion panel at the museum on Dec. 3, but the project isn’t officially over until the Cincinnati artists go to Netanya for the exhibition’s debut there, Brown says. That will happen sometime in 2018.
Re-Art: The Many Faces of Israel runs through Jan. 7, 2018 at the Cincinnati Skirball Museum, 3101 Clifton Ave., Clifton. More information: huc.edu.
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2017.
