Hilla Ben Ari: The Voice that Calls to Itself

In the multichannel video installation The Voice That Calls to Itself, Israeli artist Hilla Ben Ari (born 1972), continues her exploration of figures that have found themselves outside the Israeli cultural consensus. Her intergenerational research has evolved into an ongoing tribute to these figures by highlighting mythical, historical, social, and cultural aspects of their work. This exhibition is the third major project in a series of homages in which she holds an intergenerational and interdisciplinary dialogue between herself and these artists. Visitors to this exhibition will be drawn into an immersive, intimate and carefully choreographed experience of changing states of presence and sound.

This exhibition is a contemporary homage to the papercut artist Moshe Reifer (born Galicia, 1907, immigrated to Palestine 1926, died 1985). Ben Ari's minimalist videos are rooted in her readings of Reifer’s artistic language, particularly his Midrash Letters series and figures from the 1930s. Reifer’s creations, intricate lace-like paper cutouts, evidence the influences of Jewish mysticism, along with the effects of mental health issues that afflicted the artist through the years.  The differences in technique, materials, content, form of expression and time between the papercuts and the video installation distance them very much from each other, and yet - the more we observe the performers, the more we allow the voices to reverberate within us, the greater the connection and dialogue between them.

The exhibition was made possible by the Ticho House Fund; Israel National Lottery Council for the Arts; Asylum Arts; with additional support from Impact Collections with the assistance of Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

Hilla Ben Ari, Israeli, born 1972, The Voice that Calls to Itself, 2021, Still from multichannel video installation, Courtesy of the artist, photograph: Uri Ackerman