The Israel Trail: Procession
Ayelet Carmi and Meirav Heiman
Meirav Heiman is an interdisciplinary artist working in photography and video. She holds a BFA from the Department of Photography, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Her work departs from everyday life, recreating domestic scenarios in a stylized, grotesque manner to provoke a wide range of human emotions. The basic need for love and intimacy is counteracted by the rigidity of family and gender constructions. Heiman has received various art grants and scholarships, as well as distinctions from international art festivals.
Carmi and Heiman have been collaborating since 2015, and have produced 4 joint projects to date. The Israel Trail Procession is now showing at the Petach Tikva Museum, Israel. Sphere stood at the center of a collaborative show presented this year by Heiman and Carmi at the Neve Schechter Center, Tel Aviv. Additional projects include Icofahedron (Haifa Museum of Art, Israel, 2016), and Eclipse (2015), screened in Israel and abroad.
Their collaborative work has gained support from the Pais Council for Culture and Arts (Israel), Artis (NY), Asylum Arts (NY), and the Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts (Israel).
Ayelet Carmi is a painter and installation artist. She holds a BFA from the Department of Fine Art, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Her work often features mythological female figures, as well as hybrids of machinery and the human form. With a background in traditional painting, she reexamines the conventions of representation. Her work displays metamorphoses of the world and imaginary figments. Carmi has been awarded scholarships and grants by the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Lottery Council for the Arts.
About the exhibition
The Body Knows // Drorit Gur Arie
The roads have no eyes to see
the depth of their travelers' dreams
— Avraham Chalfi1
"The land can be felt by stamping one's foot and by forceful treading; nature can be breathed better from within"2—thus, in the spirit of the Zionist ethos, the shapers of the new Hebrew culture sought to combine the pioneering debka3 steps with the so called Yemenite step; to blend the profound desire to assimilate in the region and the heritage of the immigrants who came from distant lands. The unique fusion of avant-garde and secularism—the connection between the feet conquering the clods of earth through labor and the bare feet dancing in nature—crystallized into folk dancing which was celebrated in festivals in Kibbutz Dalia (1944–68). The Jewish settler (referred to as "pioneer" in Hebrew) will dance the Hora, rather than the East European, ultra-Orthodox Mitzvah tantz4—ideology thus demanded, decreeing that "dancing in Hebrew" means close to the soil, in nature's bosom, and together. Folk dancing and holiday celebrations in the kibbutzim incorporated various artistic fields into a symbolic-mythical narrative, which reflected the political and cultural values that defined Israeli society: pioneering and nationalism, nature and land, ingathering of the exiles, physical strength and labor. READ MORE
The Trail, The Convoy // Tali Tamir
From the time that Rachel the Poetess’ frail legs trodden “But a path… across Fields” (To My Land, 1926) and the notion of the “Trail” was conceived as “A way or a path, a narrow road for walkers and animals” (Ibn Shushan Dictionary), a 1030 km long route grew and stretched, crossing the entire length of the State of Israel, from Dan in the North all the way to the Southern Eilat. The Hebrew language did not respond to this vast change in scale, and attached the “trail” in its innocent and pure sense to the national geography. The Israel National Trail is the “pièce de résistance” of Israel’s hiking trails map: a route corresponding and maximizing the territory of the State of Israel; a sovereign marker that allows the traveler and hiker to exercise their civil freedom. Like the cyclamen and the anemone that received the patronage of the Society for the Protection of Nature, the naïve “trail” has changed from the lane of a “solitary traveler,” who wanders along the path (Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau) to the king’s highway – wide, universally recognized, and marked. We should do well, then, to set off not only with a backpack and canteen, but also with the knowledge that the phrase "The Israel Trail" holds an intrinsic paradox, since it endeavors to maintain something of the romantic intimacy of the humble and nameless trail, in the authoritative bosom of the new, upright national identity. READ MORE
Remainders of a Ritual // Galia Bar Or
A multi-age group moves from the first light of dawn to twilight and the darkness of night, tirelessly and in a strange, acrobatic movement, leaving behind desert, and sea, and woodland, yet its destination and purpose remain unknown. And even though banners and flags fly high on this journey, and the sounds also carry a ceremonial tone, it seems that the congregation is random, the materials are transient, the tools are improvised, and above all, the contact with the ground is absent.
What does this avoidance of the ground stand for and what does it have to do with the quest’s title: The Israel Trail: Procession? After all, “walking the Israel Trail” constitutes an assertion of belonging through touch, stringing a series of spots to form an identity of a “place.” In the absence of points of contact between body and ground, it seems that what is fixed here is a place of lack. This heartbreaking absence, which erupts as a funny, perennially poignant incongruity, resonates as a key characteristic in the earlier works of the artists, Meirav Heiman and Ayelet Carmi. Indeed, Heiman and Carmi did not know one another in the beginning of their artistic paths, and the affinity did not suggest itself since Heiman comes from photography and performance and Carmi from painting and painting installations – routes that were considered disparate fields at the time. However, looking back, it is clear that this unraveling of order, which rejoices in the transgression of norms, is most certainly present in each of the artists’ work. READ MORE
This Trail Started There // Dr. Assaf Selzer
בגוף יודעים // דרורית גור אריה
השביל, השיירה // טלי תמיר
שרידים של טקס // גליה בר אור
השביל הזה התחיל שם // ד"ר אסף זלצר
In the media
סוכן תרבות עם קובי מידן, ערוץ כאן
להביט בעיני לוליין שחוצה את ישראל כלכליסט, רעות ברנע
בלי לגעת בקרקע: איילת כרמי ומירב הימן בשביל ישראל, חגית פלג רותם
מסע ותהלוכה, ענבל כהן חמו, סלונה
תפוז, 7.11.18
ממרכז לפריפריה דבי לוזיה
מעבר למראה, זיוה קורט
בוקר אור, ערוץ 10, 9.12.18
ערב ערב, ערוץ כאן, 15.12.18
Petah Tikva Art Museum’s Apocalyptic Caravans and Balloon Armored Trucks By Hagay Hacohen
