Beyond borders
An interesting show by the Israeli artist Achia Anzi at Threshold Gallery excavates memory, disjuncture and omnipresent violence.
The show is divided into two sections, interlinked with each other through history, culture and ideology. The first deals with the life of Jewish people in exile, the Jewish Diaspora living in ghettos in Georgia, Poland, Germany. These people cling to their Jewish-Yiddish identity perpetuated through religious practices and beliefs, cherished traditions, and obscurantist agendas. It is no wonder that this section is done in monochromatic overtones.
In contradistinction the other section revolves around the Return to Zion, and the shattering of the Zionist Dream, with the subsequent violence, unrest, coercion and inequalities. The idea is to revisit Zionism through the post Zionist perspective, without criticising Zionism or the life in exile. He wants to explore the forgotten, lost or deified symbols of Zionism and ideas with compassion and empathy. One such work is Nimrod, through which he looks at cultural disruption via mythology and art, while simultaneously dialoguing with post modernism in art.
In another work Bird— What you sing, somebody else sings from your throat, he finds that after 120 years the Zionist bird of Bialik, does not speak the language of peace, or conciliation. For like many other Zionist symbols, it too was “robbed of its meaning, like a signifier that lost its signified.”
The works have a crudeness or coarseness that express his pain and experiences, but gently, for he speaks of birds entangled in barbed wire and fragile writing boards of knowledge. Achia’s works reflect the spiritual crisis (besides the political and the social crisis) Israel is experiencing.
— Dr Seema Bawa is an art historian, curator and critic
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