Recent
A Bruising Gaze on a Faltering Landscape is the culminating thesis work of Shabtai Pinchevsky and Katherine Simóne Reynolds, candidates of the 2021 MFA degree program in Art, Theory, and Practice, Northwestern University.
Other Works
The Tashlikh is an atonement ritual performed on the Jewish New Year, where worshipers symbolically throw their sins into natural bodies of water.
This year's Days of Awe are coinciding with collective efforts of personal and social redemption. In this online adaptation of Tashlikh, we invite you to reflect on the things you wish to let go of, for a better year to come.
[with Eftat Hakimi]
The First Trail
Ma’ale Feshkha is the first marked trail made by Jewish Zionist in The Land of Israel / Palestine, sitting just above the Dead Sea. It was marked over a week in November 1947 by a group of paramilitary members, and stopped short just before completion by the break of the 1947 civil war.
The Jefferson Grid
The Public Land Survey System was proposed by Thomas Jefferson at the end of the 18th century, during the expansion of the US westward. It was an innovative method to divide and sell the ownership of the large expanses of newly acquired and unknown territories. More than 200 years later, the grid still defines the geography and landscape of most of midwest and western US.
Point Cloud Lifta
A growing collection of 3D models of objects and buildings from the Palestinian village Lifta. The population of the village was driven out in January 1948, but the village remained mostly intact. A plan for major development is threatening to ruin the village, and to destroy it as a symbol and as a place of unique heritage and knowledge.
Stereoscopic Reconstructions
A growing collection of reconstructed point-cloud models processed from stereoscopic image pairs, photographed by the American Colony photographers in and around Jerusalem at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Gardener's Post
For 80 years the Pillbox stands at the busy junction between the garden and the valley. And for almost 70 years it's been standing locket - quietly watching and absorbing its surrounding views - the constructing neighborhoods, the expanding streets, the cars which keep getting faster, and the playing children, the keeps getting older. Only the gardners have the key.
Bezalel 1
A video made for “Open Space” (“שטח פתוח”) event in Bezalel street, at 13th Oct 2014.The video shows a reconstruction of the old wall around Bezalel art school from an early 20th century photograph. The video was projected on the building in front of the old wall.
Plaster Cameras
Shabtai Pinchevsky / Projects
Gas, Stun, Smoke
The status quo arrangements considering the Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif, which were updated along the years, do not allow non-muslim visitors, me included, to enter the Al-Aqsa mosque. This has contributed to the decision to create the works in the exhibition using existing material - photographs or videos uploaded to social media by Palestinian activists, passersby, and photographers of the Israeli Police. Through these materials the architecture is seen only as a background to the drama unfolding, which makes them very informative on the ways architecture is being employed by the practitioners of these events.
How to Photograph in the Land of Israel
‘How to Photograph in the Land of Israel?’ is the title of a chapter in the first Zionist guidebook to Palestine, published in 1937. This project goes back to early Zionist geographers and photographers to offer an alternative history of local photography - one that is made up of images that illustrate school books, travel guides, and geography lectures.
From the Shoe Box
The work is based on a collection of approximately 700 passport images found in the Yad Yizhak Ben Zvi Image Archive, Jerusalem. The images were taken at the Hashed immigration camp ('Geula'), Yemen, during the first wave of immigration of the 'On Wings of Eagles' operation (December 1948 - March 1949). Written on the verso of each picture are the names of the person photographed, date of photography, and one repeating name - Yechiel Shlomo Kessar.Shabtai Pinchevsky / Projects
The works in the exhibition is a product of a goal I set to myself - to complete a walk around the perimeter of Jerusalem. A course of walk that can be marked on a map, but is not a trail in itself. A walk that is the result of geographic principle, but is devoid of a topographical logic.
The research subject in Landscape in Continuum is a portion of land that sits between Isawiya and Abu Tor in East Jerusalem; unappropriated territory at the heart of a controversy between official authorities that seek to turn it into a national park - the Jerusalem Municipality, the Nature and Parks Authority, the Ministry of Interior, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection - and activists, politicians, urban planners, and residents of the area who wish to prevent this plan from being realized.
For my graduation project I propose to create the Cabinet of Curiosities of the “Israeli excursion”. Cabinet of Curiosities is usually translated to hebrew as “cabinet of wonders”, but I prefer the curiosity. While the wonder relates to the spectator’s experience, the curiosity describes the motivation of the collector. The collection and curation of knowledge are the subject of my project - the “knowledge of the land” (yedi'at ha'aretz). But my Cabinet of Curiosities will not ask to create any new knowledge, but to decipher an existing one - what it is we know - when we “know” the land?
The work is based on a collection of approximately 700 passport images found in the Yad Yizhak Ben Zvi Image Archive, Jerusalem. The images were taken at the Hashed immigration camp ('Geula'), Yemen, during the first wave of immigration of the 'On Wings of Eagles' operation (December 1948 - March 1949). Written on the verso of each picture are the names of the person photographed, date of photography, and one repeating name - Yechiel Shlomo Kessar.