“There are individuals who have no idea learn how to destroy fragments of their lives, regardless that they hinder their improvement,” the Israeli artist Dov Or-Ner wrote in typewritten directions for a conceptual artwork experiment in 1972, referencing a normal want to launch issues from the previous that now not serve us. “What is usually recommended right here is to turn out to be freed from no matter one chooses.”
As a part of a landmark Israeli conceptual artwork mission known as Metzer-Meiser located alongside the seamline of Kibbutz Metzer and the Arab village Meiser between June and October 1972, Or-Ner requested residents of each communities for private gadgets they have been able to shed, and buried them collectively as specimens to be unearthed at some future level. In the meantime, three different artists carried out different actions linked to those neighbouring cities.
The painter and sculptor Moshe Gershuni photographed Kibbutz Metzer after which hypothetically parcelled plots of land amongst kibbutz members—foreshadowing the privatisation of the socialist kibbutzim a long time later. Avital Geva, a sculptor curious about artwork and the kibbutz (and whose father was the architect of Meiser’s mosque), scattered 1000’s of scrapped books alongside the trail between the 2 communities, inviting individuals to gather books they wished. Essentially the most extensively coated mission was Change of Earth, Metzer-Messer by the sculptor Micha Ullman, who dug two equivalent pits on the centre of every group with the assistance of native children, transferring soil from one to the opposite.
Micha Ullman, Define for 2 chairs, 2025 Courtesy the artist
“It’s the primary mission that addresses the Jewish-Arab area, which is why it’s so studied,” explains Anat Lidror, who co-curated (with Tali Tamir) Metzer-Meiser: Take 2, a up to date exhibition responding to Metzer-Meiser on the Givat Haviva Artwork Gallery in northern Israel.
“The particular factor about it, and which turned it right into a mythic mission, is the hyphen,” Tamir stated on the exhibition opening on 15 November. “It connects and likewise incorporates fears, suspicions, belief, distrust, issues, every kind of obstacles and misunderstandings and concrete legends that arose right here and there, right and incorrect interpretations—and all that is a part of the story of this exhibition.”
The unique 1972 mission was impressed by the pleasant ties between Metzer (a kibbutz established by Argentinian Jews in 1953) and Meiser (established within the late nineteenth century). Positioned just some kilometres away, Givat Haviva was an apt venue to revisit this historic mission, because the oldest Israeli establishment selling reconciliation between Jews and Arabs since its founding in 1949, and a civil society organisation working in direction of social change and peace. The unique mission occurred precisely a 12 months earlier than the Yom Kippur Struggle and the present exhibition opened on the heels of a tenuous ceasefire within the longest warfare within the nation’s historical past.
Metzer-Meiser: Take 2 contains two of the unique artists—Geva and Ullman—plus ten modern artists who’re Jewish and Palestinian, established and rising, female and male: Tsibi Geva, Saher Miari, Marion Fuchs, Faten Abu Ali, Noa Karavan-Cohen, Smadar Timor, Abed Elsalam Sabia’, Peter Jacob Maltz, Asalah Hassan and Dror Ben Naftaly.
Marion Fuchs, The Dialog, 2010 Photograph by Tal Badrak
Exhibition planning started round 4 years in the past, when Ullman requested to revisit the mission’s unique location. Representatives of the Givat Haviva Artwork Gallery accompanied him there, and began discussing a reassessment of the mission for the reason that fiftieth anniversary of Metzer-Meiser was approaching. In line with Lidror, Ullman appreciated the thought and was keen “to answer the area which, from his perspective, represents hope”. Geva took extra convincing. “He has loads to say. He really factors his statements extra in direction of self-criticism, with the place we’re headed.”
Metzer-Meiser: Take 2 slowly got here collectively because the curators invited different artists, together with Arab artists and girls (a marked distinction from the 1972 mission). The mission was additionally delayed by the onset of the warfare in 2023. “Then, a 12 months into the warfare, we returned to it and stated, ‘Now’s the time. There’s no different time,’” Lidror says. “The story right here isn’t just of two peoples, however of a want to rethink.”
Ullman’s work for Take 2 contains two chair-shaped pits stuffed with sand.Geva created Books sunk in a swamp and Concrete Jewish bookcase, which maintain historic books immersed in concrete, symbolising a petrification of the values described within the books.
The Jerusalem-based artist Faten Abu Ali, who creates hybrids via a technique of botanical grafting as a metaphor for mixing completely different species, merged olive and carob bushes. “It’s not one thing that’s alleged to work,” Lidror says. “She makes an try to say, ‘Perhaps we are able to add one thing new right here, from throughout the Jewish-Arab story.’ No more of the identical, we have to rethink.”
Avital Geva, Books sunk in a swamp, 2025 Photograph by Kobi Shraya
In the meantime, a 20-minute documentary created for the exhibition by Noa Karavan-Cohen and Smadar Timor, known as Rethinking Metzer Meiser, contains interviews with six individuals who keep in mind the 1972 mission. And Saher Miari created a clear tube-like column stuffed with soil and private gadgets, as an allusion to Ullman’s unique soil change work and Or Ner’s interred objects.
As for the unique Or Ner mission that hoped to cast-off the fragments that hinder our improvement, it might be misplaced to historical past. Its whereabouts are unknown, the curators are nonetheless attempting to find out if it’s buried within the fields close to Metzer and Meiser, or even perhaps someplace in Kibbutz Hatzor, the place the artist lived. Or Ner died final 12 months, but when he have been alive would possibly he ask if we are able to nonetheless transfer ahead, even with out finding and liberating ourselves of the obstructions we’ve inherited?
“The innocence has disappeared,” says Lidror of how the collective mindset has modified between the 1972 mission and Take 2. “There’s problem, but in addition one thing that brings us nearer to understanding complexity.”
Metzer-Meiser: Take 2, till 17 January 2026, Givat Haviva Artwork Gallery, Israel
