MUZA, the Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, is pleased to present the first “Photomenta” – a large-scale photography exhibition opening at the museum. The exhibition, which will take place every five years, presents hundreds of works by dozens of participants from numerous Mediterranean countries. Serving as a bridge that extends over seas and peoples, borders and political conflicts, the photographs on display offer a mental, artistic and narrative point of encounter with the “others” in our vicinity. The exhibition extends throughout the museum galleries, pavilions and archaeological garden, unfurling like a maritime map or fishing net. The exhibition’s various sites serve as port cities, while the series of photographs on display appear alongside the museum’s archaeological and historical treasures.

The point of departure for the video piece “Impermanent Display” was a pair of paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini, Ancient Rome and Modern Rome (1757). These pendant paintings introduce the collection as a reflection of economic power and political force.

The Petach Tikva Museum of Art’s Collection is like other peripheral museums in Israel: a collection which holds works by both renowned and amateur artists.

With the blessing of the Museum and the Israel Antiquities Authority, Dana was given permission to take some one hundred mid-century works out of the collection storeroom, and suspend them on the walls of the Mazor Mausoleum archaeological site – a Roman tomb near Petach Tikva, for the duration of the filming. The totality offers a subjective, stratified picture of life in Israel in the state’s early years; a jigsaw puzzle combining influences of the cultural melting pot, Arab-Jewish relations, war and death, patriotism and the naïve desire to establish a social utopia.

Founder and curator of Photomenta: Guy Raz

Dana Levy, “Impermanent Display”, 2014