The Living Room
Book Presale
Three years ago, I was told that my family home in Beit She’an — the house where my mother grew up and which formed an integral and meaningful part of my own childhood — was to be sold and demolished. Just before it slipped from my hands and disappeared, I decided to return to the house and stay there for several weeks, having the intention to preserve something – I did not yet know what.
The extended stay in the empty house brought to the surface fragments of memory from our shared domestic space — flashes of moments and events once enacted in the living room. Driven by the impulse of capturing this occurrence, I traced the course of these moments across the floor’s grid and then cast concrete slabs over the marked tiles. This moment became the point of departure for a project that materialised as a sculptural exhibition at the Beit Uri and Rami Nehoshtan Museum, and now unfolds into a book, bringing together texts, monotypes with concrete, drawings, archival footage, and photographic works.
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The Living Room is an artist’s book in four parts. Each part is guided by texts in Hebrew and their English translation, that travel between the diaristic and the fictional. The first part takes place after the encounter with the empty house, confronted by an event of uncontrollable recollection. Part Two is situated in my studio in Tel Aviv. During this time, I was working on sculptures that physically echoed the house, while continuing to visit it as it was being demolished. The third part marks a moment of reflection; it reveals a conversation between the curator and me, recalling the time we worked on the exhibition at URN Museum, along with installation photos from the show. The fourth and final part takes place after the house is gone, while returning to Beit She’an and wondering: Do I still belong to this town, now that the house no longer stands? Now that the bond that tied me to it has unravelled?