Gestures of Locality

Artist list

Shirly Bar-Amotz, Deganit Stern Schocken, Noga Hadad, Dana Hakim, Vered Kaminsky, Esther Knobel, Gregory Larin, Ariel Lavian, Einat Leader, Tamar Paley, Deganit Stern Schocken

The exhibition Gestures of Locality offers a reading of locality through the body gestures of the maker-jewel-wearer triangle. Instead of collecting works for this exhibition, we asked the jewelers for their stories and gestures, loaded with craft and making, material and memory. The works were then passed on to wearers who encountered them for the first time. With this process, we explored the choreography of jewelry and its connection to culture and place. Are there local gestures? Or gestures of locality?

It is a challenge to define what Israeli design is, yet it is clear that human condition charges objects with meaning. Gestures of making and wearing – our body memory and physical being – bring to life inanimate objects. Given the opportunity to address Israeli design, I chose to focus on locality – not necessarily in terms of local materials or style – but in the gestures provoked from certain objects allowing a sense of place. Each of us finds locality in simple daily actions which make a place or interaction familiar. A jewel is a micro-cosmos – the gestures around it can create belonging, a momentary locality.

This exhibition is part of the bigger exhibition Folk Tune - Israeli Design or Design in Israel? of which Yuval Saar is the Head Curator.