Manofim Festival Celebrates 10th Edition in Jerusalem

Launching the exhibition season in Jerusalem, Manofim Festival kicks off on October 23rd and runs for a period of 5 days until the 27th. This independent initiative run by Rinat Edelstein and Lee He Shulov is currently celebrating its 10th year, and will be showcasing a multiple array of events including exhibitions, performances, music events, film screenings, tours, conferences, parties, and workshops to name a few. Each evening the festival will move to a different part of Jerusalem, bringing art to unconventional places, ultimately reaching a broad audience boasting an all inclusive attitude by being open to the public and free of charge. Free shuttle buses transport visitors between locations during the vernissage. Celebrating the capital’s thriving culture, the festival acts as the flagship event of Jerusalem’s contemporary art scene.

The Floating Life (2017), Ran Slavin

By encouraging new creations, the festival generates a discourse and dialogue between artists and facilitates the accessibility of culture and art to residents and visitors, connecting the Eastern and Western sides of the city through art. The aim being to expose the contemporary art scene in Jerusalem to diverse crowds, as well as strengthen and empower Jerusalem’s artists. The festival is made possible with the support of Beracha Foundation, the Ministry of Culture and Sport, Jerusalem Municipality, Jerusalem Foundation, Mifal HaPais Council for Culture and Arts, Eden, and Manofim Friends Association. The project partners include all the contemporary art venues in Jerusalem, independent artist groups, culture institutions and artists from various disciplines.

‘Properties’: Exploring the Cultural Significance of Talbiya Neighbourhood

The main exhibition of the 2018 Manofim Festival entitled ‘Properties’ will take place in Talbiya neighborhood, located in the heart of Jerusalem on the edge of the city center. A green and leafy suburb, it also consists of many layers that store diverse historical narratives. It was established in the 19th century by wealthy Palestinian Arab Christians, reaching it’s architectural peak in the 1920’s. To this day Arab villas still stand, acting as a mark of historical significance. After the war in 1948, Palestinian residents that occupied the neighbourhood forcefully fled, and in due course, was populated mostly by Israeli Jews. Today its residents consist of mainly professionals, academics, diplomats, and government officials. It is also home to an unusual assortment of institutions that coexist in the same space including the President’s Residence, Prime Minister’s Residence, as well as various research and cultural institutions.

Newer Jerusalem and suburbs Talbieh, a Christian Arab community. Unknown Photographer, approx 1920-1933 © American Colony collection

The exhibition aims to spotlight this diversity of the neighbourhood, held in various spaces – both public and private – creating a dialogue surrounding the contradictions that are present. Through various art actions, the exhibition will introduce critical questions that call for a reexamination of this exceptional, multi-faceted space whose residents may have come to see it as mundane and banal.

Manofim : Homage to Anna Ticho

Lifescape: The Work of Anna Ticho (b.1894 – 1980) presented at Ticho House, focuses on the depth and breadth of the artists work covering 70 years of her artistic endeavour. It showcases the range and richness of her oeuvre including early watercolour works from her days as a young girl in Vienna to her final works. The exhibition is complemented by the debut of Dorian Gottlieb’s new video, which acts as a homage as well as contemporary response to Ticho’s drawings of the historically significant Jerusalem hills. Anna Ticho: Rhythms in Landscape, another exhibition presented by The Jerusalem Print Workshop in collaboration with the Israeli Museum, highlights the artists landscape etchings, some of which were created at the workshop in the 70’s.

Judean Hills (1972), Charcoal on paper 100×70 cm, Anna Ticho © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Themes of Displacement and Global Warming

Maries Gallery presents Plastik Arts, focussing on the dilemma surrounding the threatening impact of plastic on our environment, and the ghostly presence and ultimate worsening of global warming through over consumption. It explores the vast range of polymeric materials and products that are used in everyday life, and for the rest of our lives, exploring the impending fate of Earth. The exhibition offers an artistic and philosophical meditation on the gap between the “magic of synthetic ease” and the weight of its price. The group exhibition features the likes of artists Riva Pinski Awadish, Yoel Gilon, Alon Even Paz, Smadar Tsook and Hadar Amit amongst others.

‘Homes’ by Niv Rozenberg, an exhibition presented by The Photographic Communications Department at Hadassah Academic College, explores the body of work created by the artist between 2000 and 2018 – where he was inspired by changes in the urban landscape in which he was surrounded – namely New York and Tel Aviv. Taking a closer look by examining this familiar yet unknown environment with a conflicted gaze, his manipulated images create an aesthetic that shifts between photography, architecture, and graphic design with an emphasis on colour, shape, space, and time. It also underscores themes of displacement that are so prevalent in our current society regarding the conflict of war leading to the separation of people from their families, as well as their homeland.

Rina Nikova in a Contemporary Context

Rina Nikova (b.1897 – 1973), a pioneer of classical and biblical ballet in Palestine, will be celebrated at Hacubia gallery. She founded the Yemenite Dance Ensemble, engaged in ethnic and biblical choreography, and explored the link between dance and the land. A solo performance by dancer Shira Eviatar in collaboration with Eviatar Said, will be held at the exhibition. This visual story delineates a personal Yemenite cultural landscape: movements, dances, rhythms, gestures, values, and patterns of thought and communication that altogether compose a language practiced inside the home. When this language entered the public space, it was identified and labeled as “other.” On stage, Said, an immigrant in his own home, unravels and re-links physical memories of the past, bodies of knowledge, sensations and emotions, as he celebrates his existence as an independent body in the present.

Rina Nikova, prima ballerina, in Swan Lake,The Palestine Opera,1925-1928, Photographer Zvi Oron © Courtesy of the Zionist Archives, Jerusalem