Exhibition by Einat Leader

Curator: Sari Faran, Text: Shirly Bar-Amotz

2009

In contrast to the traditional decorative function of jewelry, these jewelry pieces try to enable when worn an expression of political action, by commemorating a visual memory of the Jaffa- Tel Aviv area. The shape of the jewelry pieces is derived from the shape of the six Arab villages that were in the Jaffa –Tel Aviv area prior to 1948. There making was enabled by using the maps made by “Zochrot” organization (2007) marking the Palestinian villages. These are villages names that are still reminiscent in street signs or neighbourhood names, but there marking is no longer on any maps and their history is being erased from the collective memory: Summayl, Sheikh Muwannis, Salama, Manshiyya, Jammasin, Abu Kabir. In these works, the original maps are extended as though they ‘expanded’to an estimated size if they had existed today. Due to the ‘transparency’ of the shapes – the body and the geography mix together visually into one, so that the memory turns into bodily pain itself.