Month: December 2008

 

Up against a wall

The Jerusalem Post, December 26, 2008

Slapped over the graffiti and posters that decorate an abandoned building on otherwise glossy Dizengoff is an advertisement – in plain typeface on plain white paper – for “Desert Life,” the first exhibition of a new artists’ collective. The homegrown advertisement mirrors both the space and the spirit of the exhibition, it is do-it-yourself. Just steps away from Rothschild Boulevard’s art scene, which has been abuzz with international attention, this group of artists is attempting to carve out their own space both literally and figuratively.

Entering the exhibition on Herzl Street is a bit of a surprise – one doesn’t expect to encounter dirt floors, plants dripping from overhead balconies, and the sounds of people going about their daily lives in an art gallery. Chick Corea drifts down into the gallery, resonating between the walls. This clearly isn’t an ordinary space, but that’s the point.

Hidden from view, in the ground floor courtyard of a building noted for having Tel Aviv’s first elevator, a few people are milling about – passersby drawn in by the banner that is draped over the façade of this quintessentially Tel Aviv building. Everything about this exhibition speaks to the fact that it stands apart from the bubble of the mainstream art world.

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Bittersweet surrender

The Jerusalem Post, December 12, 2008

I landed in the Philippines as I land everywhere – with no plans. Though I didn’t know where I was going, I knew exactly what I was looking for: a mind-blowing beach, minus the mind-numbing tourist scene. I wanted meditatively quiet sands, a place to let a few days slip away. I wanted to be somewhere that I could slip out of my skin.

Manila was anything but quiet, and the minute I got a look at the city – from the backseat of a cab – I wanted out. I checked into a pension, dropped my bags and headed straight to the closest Cebu Pacific airline office, located in a nearby mall.

It’s a cliché of travel writing to talk about contrasts, but in Manila the class differences are too glaringly obvious to ignore. As I walked to the mall, I passed a family of eight living on a street corner. The mother, a baby hoisted on her hip, stood outside their makeshift shelter of cardboard. One of her children, a little boy who looked to be about four, ran barefoot and naked in and out of the street, merrily bouncing on and off the sidewalk. Air-conditioned cabs, their windows rolled up tight, spirited their shopping-bag-laden passengers by, whisking them past the family.

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Where there’s smoke: review of A.B. Yehoshua’s novel Friendly Fire

The Jerusalem Post, December 12, 2008

While perusing the bowing bookshelves of a dinner party host recently, I noticed a large A.B. Yehoshua collection. “Looks like someone’s a Yehoshua fan,” I remarked.

The hostess laughed, “Not exactly.” She explained the books once belonged to her mother. No, her mother hadn’t died – “Savta,” as everyone called her, was alive and well and sitting across from me at the dinner table.

“It came to a point that I was through with Yehoshua,” Savta said. “Enough was enough!”

A literature lover and a poet herself, she adored the writing but despised the ideology. She found herself torn, unable to throw the books away, and she bequeathed them to her daughter instead.

Love him or hate him – or both, like Savta – Yehoshua provokes strong reactions in his readers.

Sometimes.

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