The topic of the article is the link between identity and memory in the art-exhibition of artist Eli Petel “Ha’Teva Ha’Mekory” (The Original Nature), and the new space the exhibition creates at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Tel-Aviv Museum of Art. The article examines the formation of a renewed identity, as expressed trough social process the artist experiences on the individual and collective level, from an inter-generational prism.
The art of Eli Petel can be interpreted as exposing social power-relations, or as struggling against its interpellation as a part of the historically-rooted Jewish chain of signals. The article reveals both the artist’s view on societal changes as well as his internal identification processes which, on the one hand, correspond with the same changes, but on the other refuse to form a coherent political stand.