The Compromised Land

The Compromised Land exhibition and accompanying publication offers a look at Israel through the intellectually and emotionally invested eyes of some of its remarkable artists. Their work gives voice to a sense of unsettlement and existential threat, through the experience of internal and external discord, as the artists look at Israel and Israeli politics and culture with urgency, criticality, questions, and an abiding, if complicated love for the land. This project brings together...
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The Compromised Land exhibition and accompanying publication offers a look at Israel through the intellectually and emotionally invested eyes of some of its remarkable artists. Their work gives voice to a sense of unsettlement and existential threat, through the experience of internal and external discord, as the artists look at Israel and Israeli politics and culture with urgency, criticality, questions, and an abiding, if complicated love for the land. This project brings together a selection of works that underscore the shift from the utopian goals of the first generation of Israelis to the escalating complications and disillusionments communicated by present generations, grappling with a host of issues through the lens of the political, the nationalistic, the militaristic, the social, the religious, and the personal. The exhibition and book also provide a specific examination of Israeli photography and video, practices that dominate contemporary Israeli art and for which it is internationally recognized. The Compromised Land will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated 96-page exhibition catalogue with essays by co-curators Helaine Posner, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Neuberger Museum of Art, and art critic and curator Lilly Wei; Ory Dessau, curator of the 3rd Herzliya Biennial; and Ron Pundak, Israeli historian and journalist and former Executive Director of the Peres Center for Peace.