Exhibited artists cover up their work in protest after piece portraying ultra-Orthodox Jewish man is removed
Four overlapping black and white rectangles make up Israeli artist David Reeb’s painting Jerusalem. On two, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man is portrayed praying at the Western Wall – known also as the Wailing Wall – from two different angles, his hands pressed against the stone. Opposite the images, thick brushstrokes spell out phrases in Hebrew: “Jerusalem of gold”, the title of a nationalistic song – and “Jerusalem of shit”.
A district court refused to intervene, and efforts at compromise centring on displaying the piece behind a screen, or only on Saturdays, when ultra-Orthodox Jews would not visit, failed. Fifteen of the other featured artists covered their own work with black cloth in solidarity with Reeb, and after the mediation process broke down, dozens of the group asked for their contributions to be removed.
Reeb, 69, has had his work shown at Tate Modern and Documenta, Germany’s quinquennial exhibition. His art is deeply political, focusing on war and the occupation of the Palestinian territories: he usually works from his photographs taken at the scenes of protests in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The subjectivity of memory, along with a deadpan detachedness from what Reeb sees as an unresolvable conflict, are recurrent themes.
“I wanted to say something about how the wall is viewed with sentimentality, that the idea of it, the idea of Jerusalem, doesn’t match the reality,” Reeb said. Reeb wonders if the tone of public debate is changing in Israel. “The readiness to use antisemitism as a way to attack anything that challenges nationalistic symbols is new, I think.
“The decision to go and take down the works was hard for the artists and for the museum, so it was a type of sacrifice for the sake of artistic autonomy,” he said. “We showed that a museum isn’t just a building: It’s not about the space, it’s the people you work with and how you work with them.