Time - An Interactive Exhibition for the Whole Family

Opening: August 1 2020
Closing: May 1 2021
Curator: Eran Shavit
Cocurator: Shir Meller Yamaguchi


Time is one of the principal components of our life. Almost every event we experience is connected to the concept of time: We operate on the basis of a schedule we predetermine, we try to “make the most” of our time, we get to meetings “after” or “before” the appointed time, we chase after it, wait for it to pass, live the present, plan the future and bask in the past. But, even with all that, the eternal question is “what is time?”. The riddle remains unsolved and mysterious.

The exhibition seeks to examine the concept of time through the world of art, and invites the visitors,older and younger alike, to try to “control time” using a wide variety of artistic, technological and interactive tools – to play, experience, consider and refashion the concept of time, based on their own perception.

The exhibition is divided into three sections:

The first section of the exhibition presents the mechanistic perception of time as an absolute term which can be split into seconds, minutes and hours.

In addition to this approach, this section will feature cyclic perceptions of time that focus on the cyclic repetition of day and night, of the lunar and solar cycles, and the seasons of the year. For example, in the entrance area to the exhibition Boaz Aharanovitch exhibits a series of photographs that addresses growth and decay. The photographs, which
seem to examine the cyclic repetitiveness of nature, are transposed here to urban domesticated nature of the home garden of jars created by the artist. The British photographer Zed Nelson exhibits a photographic series taken from a project in which he documents the members of one family on an annual basis. The series makes it possible to observe accelerated time through processes of growth, maturing and ageing. Lilac Sasson will exhibit rusty tins of canned food which incorporate “timeless” works of art while she confronts the eternal and perishable with each other.

The second section of the exhibition concentrates on the most prominent features of the sequence of time: movement and change, and the directionality and rhythm of time.

Examination of the rhythm of time comes across, for example, in a site-specific new work by Nardin Seruji. The large number of clocks
that make up this work surround the visitors on all sides, with each one ticking at its own pace. The Big Bang video work by Ori Gersht connects ideas from the inception of the space-time continuum across around 13.8 billion years, and the decelerated and stylized processes of destruction created by the exploding of a bouquet of flowers. The principle of flow and change, one of the prominent features of
time, takes on an infinite number of appearances and forms across the exhibition. For example, the sand flows slowly but incessantly between the fingers in the video work by Lee Yanor which invites the members of the public to actually pass through it, and the giant hourglass created by Liat Livni turns into an enormous tornado which has spun out of control. Examination of the directionality of time touches
on the core of the differentiation between the past, future and present. Which of them really “exists”, and what is just a transient illusion? About Spilt Milk, a work by Nivi Alroyi, and the eggshell which opens and closes in the work of Guy Hadani, Aliza Olmert and Efrat Peleg look at the (impossible) reversal of the direction of different events, while Tal Amitai freezes the chain reaction of cards tumbling on each other, and raises questions relating to the order of actions between cause and effect.

The third and last section of the exhibition is an enormous wall entitled Before I Die. The wall, which is part of an international exhibition of the same name by American artist Candy Change, comprises more than 5,000 walls in dozens of countries across the whole world. Here the members of the public are invited to write down their plans and dreams in chalk (erasable) for the time they have left, and to complete the thought-provoking sentence: “Before I die I’d like to…”

Participating artists:

Boaz Aharanovitch, Aliza Olmert, Romy Achituv, Nivi Alroy, Tal Amitai-Lavi, Ella Amitay Sadovsky, Benni Efrat, Aviel Basil, Hila Ben Ari, Oded Ben Hefer, Bartzi Goldblat, Ori Gersht, Guy Hadany, Dana Zaltman,
Lee Yanor, Liat Livni, Sigalit Landau, Dafna Margolin, Esther Naor, Zed Nelson, Nardeen Srouji, Einat Arif- Galanti, Belu-Simion Fainaru, Efrat Peleg, Haimi Fenichel, Ofra Zimbalista, Limor Tsror, Nir Keidar, Asaf
Kliger, Christoph Keller, Ronen Sharabani, Dafna Sartiel, Lilac Sasson