New in the Collection

This special display presents a selection of recent acquisitions, mostly in contemporary Israeli painting, by Adel Abdessemed, Shai Azoulay, Avner Ben-Gal, Irit Hemmo, Jossef Krispel and Fatma Shanan Dery.

Alongside these works, is the video Escape Artists by prominent Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner. This video is the product of two years of weekly video lessons the artist gave to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers held at the Holot Detention Center in the Negev. Ben-Ner uses the cinematic medium to mirror the refugees' harsh reality, and, reversely, uses that same reality to reveal cinematic tricks and illusions. Thus, viewers are made privy to the lives of the refugees while also benefitting from a fascinating lesson in cinema.

Guy Ben-Ner, Escape Artists, 2016, Video, 28 mins
Purchased for The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by the “Here & Now” Contemporary Israeli Art Acquisitions Committee, Israel
Purchased for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art through a donation from the Voting for Art acquisition group