Blind Spot: Petach-Tikva Museum Challenges Israel's Canonical Narrative

For Israel's 60th anniversary, the state organized six chronological exhibitions across six museums to showcase its art collections. The Petach-Tikva Museum of Art, under new director Drorit Gur Arie, opted out of this official narrative. Instead, it mounted 'Blind Spot,' a thematic exhibition on vision and blindness, curated by Carmella Jacoby Volk and Einat Manoff. The show features works by about fifteen artists addressing Israel's 'great blindness' toward Arabness and Mizrahi heritage, and the marginalization of Mizrahim and Arabs. Works include Dafna Shalom's video of a blind person reading the Song of the Sea in Braille, Manar Zuabi's performance 'Bidoun' (2008) using white liquid on a mosaic to reveal hidden architecture, Yochai Mato's neon installation 'Sunset' (2008) evoking the collapse of Israeli power, Shay Id Alony's video 'Burrows' (2007) exploring black space, and Sasha Serber's 'Entirely Burned' (2008) showing burnt palm trunks in polystyrene. The catalog (Hebrew and English) includes essays on the blind spot, distraction, virtual gaze, infrastructure, topography, black space, agoraphobia, and shibboleth, plus a longer essay by architect Naama Meishar titled 'The Palm Boulevard or Orientalism as a Blind Spot and Double Mechanism in the Construction of the Israeli Landscape.' The exhibition ran from June 5 to October 25, 2008.