The Magic Mountain
Arad Contemporary Art Center
April - July, 2021
Artists: Anisa Ashkar, Aya Ben Ron, David Behar-Perahia and Dan Farberoff, Dganit Ben Admon, Eitan Ben Moshe, Hadassa Goldvicht, Ishai Shapira Kalter, Meir Tati, Niv Gafni, Regev Amrani, Sasha Tamarin, Shirel Horovitz, Smadar Levy, Talia Keinan
Co-Curator: Bar Yerushalmi
The year was 1963. Dr. Frank, a asthma specialist at the Beilinson Hospital, announced that a human experiment would be conducted in Arad, for the first time, on the healing of patients with respiratory diseases. Not long after the city was established, asthmatic teenagers came to stay with local families, and a group of patients from Sweden flew over to see if it was "asthmatic-friendly.”
They were all there to study the effect of clean, dry desert air on the disease. The project thrived, and during the 1960s and 1970s medical institutions and a variety of hotels with promising names were established in Arad, benefiting also from the healing properties attributed to the Dead Sea.
The municipality has even issued regulations banning the cultivation of allergenic plants within the city area. The story culminates through the 1970s and 1980s, during which many patients came to Arad seeking recovery, rest, and healing for body and soul.
This exhibition was born out of Arad's story as a city of convalescence and relaxation - a story that eventually became involved in struggles. Today, the city and its region attract many people, among them artists, who desire to rehabilitate, repair, and heal the local society and environment, which have been injured and damaged over the years.
From these two perspectives, we have extracted the common denominator - the process of convalescence.
The works of art displayed here have been gathered in one place because they invited spending time in front of the vital signs of nature and the body, in front of the conditions that sustain them and us, stopping and looking at what had halted and what continued. Many of the works dwelt on the subtleties of time and the bodily experiences involved: beds waiting for the affected/vacationing/recovering, or a film that followed the daily routines of patients in a vegetative state. Some of the works referred to healing as a prospect of a true vacation, a return to abstract childhood experiences, or a glimpse into a frozen moment of innocence.
