Several months after Rut Patir lowered the curtain of the exhibition she presented at the Venice Biennale as a sign of solidarity with the hostages, last April, her installation “(M)otherland”, a video work in five parts, was acquired by the Jewish Museum in New York and will be presented for the very first time in March at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
The work – a series of videos created using digital animation techniques and featuring Iron Age fertility goddesses – will be presented at the Jewish Museum after the restoration of its galleries is completed – work which should be completed in the fall of 2025.
“It’s bittersweet,” Patir explains to Times of Israel. “I feel deep down that this work is good, that people will see it and be moved by it, that it is important. Which goes hand in hand with guilt, anger, sadness and all the things that people like me are feeling right now.”
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The original videos for “(M)otherland” – “Petah Tikva (Waiting)”, “Intake”, “Retrieval Stories” and “Motherland” – discuss Patir’s experience of dealing with her infertility and the difficulties she faced in finding a place in a male-dominated medical world – she also talks about the pressures for state-funded IVF.
The videos feature 3D animations of palm-sized female figurines – figurines that are commonly identified as fertility amulets. In the film, they are enlarged and animated by Patir, often with humor, who uses them to represent himself and to represent more broadly the women around him when they discuss fertility treatments.
Patir works with artifacts representing female figurines from the ancient Levant.
The fifth and final video, “Keening,” was created after the Hamas terrorist pogrom on October 7 – it features the same figurines along with thousands of fragments of amulets usually kept in museums.
The abandoned and broken women of “Keening” seem to suddenly find a new lease of life in a procession which is strangely reminiscent of the numerous rallies in support of the hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza which have been organized over the last 14 months.
Artist Ruth Patir (center) with curators Tamar Margalit (left) and Mira Lapidot (right), who lock the doors to Patir’s exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale, scheduled to open on April 20, 2024. (Credit: Ella Barak)
Patir, 40, a graduate of Bezalel and Columbia University – who likes to fuse documentary and computer-generated imagery in her works – was informed in September 2023 that her video work project had been accepted for the prestigious Venice Biennale, which takes place in April.
“It’s a short time to produce something new,” says Patir, who had to create the artwork and raise the funds for its production and installation.
Then the pogrom of October 7 took place – a massacre that plunged the artist into a whirlwind of grief and anguish. By December, it became clear to her that the work could not be exhibited as planned.
“With my curators, we took stock every two weeks, anticipating many upheavals,” says Patir.
Ultimately, Patir, in collaboration with the curators she works with – Mira Lapidot, who is chief curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Tamar Margalit, who is also the latter’s sister – decided to complete the installation, to go to Venice and figure out what she would actually do once there.
“We were waiting to see what the government was going to do” in the face of the hostage crisis and the ongoing war, Patir explains.
-However, nothing had gone as planned. Iran’s first attack on Israel took place on April 1, a day before the Biennale was scheduled to open. The members of Patir’s team then found themselves stranded on the way to Venice.
Italian soldiers stand guard in front of the Israel Pavilion during the pre-opening of the Venice Art Biennale, April 16, 2024. The artist representing Israel at the Venice Biennale called for a ceasefire fire in the war with Hamas and said its exhibition would remain closed until the hostages were freed. Ruth Patir’s video installation, “Motherland”, was to be inaugurated on April 20. (Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP)
Patir and the two curators then engaged in an examination of conscience.
“We went to our hotel rooms,” she said. “We thought about how each possibility would feel and came to a decision that was unanimous.”
Patir closed the doors to his exhibition on the first day of the event, which opened to the public on April 20.
“The artist and the curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when a ceasefire agreement paving the way for the release of the hostages has been concluded,” it was written on a sign stuck to the door of the flag.
Ancient 3D figurines in artist Ruth Patir’s work “Keening,” on display at the 60th Venice Biennale, scheduled to open April 20, 2024. (Credit: Ruth Patir and Braverman Gallery Tel Aviv)
At the time, Patir, Lapidot and Margalit said they created the work to mourn the women, Israeli and Palestinian, who had lost their lives during the war, to honor those who had been kidnapped and taken to Gaza , to all those who had experienced loss, heartbreak and mourning.
They also noted that they believed in the existence of two States for two peoples living in peace.
” I think that [la décision de fermer l’exposition] opened people’s hearts and brought about all kinds of different reactions,” says Patir. “It made people think and I felt at the time that it made them re-examine their binary perception of reality.”
The Venice art event, held from April to November, attracted a million visitors, including 750,000 women, according to Patir.
Patir, for her part, stayed for a week after the opening – visiting the exhibitions, spending time in Venice with her family, meeting patrons and speaking to the international press, trying to draw attention to the October 7 and hostage issues with the media.
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art had already planned to exhibit Patir’s work in March, notes Lapidot – and the artist was more than pleased when the Jewish Museum, led by James Snyder, decided to purchase the work. Snyder was head of the Israel Museum for many years and worked with Lapidot when the latter was chief curator of the fine arts wing of the Israel Museum.
The Jewish Museum declined to disclose the price paid for “(M)otherland,” and Snyder, in a museum statement, thanked the anonymous donors who made the acquisition possible.
“I’m happy for Ruth,” exclaims Lapidot. “This work took so much effort and thought, and it is a good exhibition that has not yet been shown to the public. Now she will have a stage.”
Patir’s exhibition will remain at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art for approximately five months before being transferred to the Jewish Museum.
