Michal Rovner's Stone and Video Installations at the Louvre

Michal Rovner's intervention at the Louvre (May 19–August 15, 2011) reconciled stone and video, two mediums with opposing temporalities. Her Makom series—cubic dry-stone structures—were placed in the Cour Napoléon near the pyramid. Makom II used light stones from abandoned houses in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem; Makom IV used basalt blocks from the Golan Heights. Makom IV appeared ruined and fissured, contrasting with Makom II's closed, impenetrable form. These structures mimicked Middle Eastern conflicts and symbolized both displacement and potential alliance, as stones were assembled without cutting. The Makom were built, dismantled, and reassembled at the Louvre, documented in the exhibition "Making of Makom" at Espace Louis Vuitton (May 18–29, 2011). Rovner also projected fragile forms onto archaeological objects from the Levant in the Louvre's collections, including a basin and bronze ostraca. Two evanescent silhouettes animated intermittently on stone plaques near the oldest large Near Eastern sculpture (from Jordan) and the Mesha Stele. In the medieval moat, a moving fresco of thousands of signs and ghostly apparitions formed an indecipherable text, blurring spatial references. Hebrew letters and Arabic numerals—used to reassemble the Makom—were projected onto the walls, creating the illusion of tattooed stone. Rovner's work engaged with museology, extracting, reassembling, and preserving for the future.