N e w   E x h i b i t i o n

 

Mixed Emotions

 

Haifa Museum of Art

Opening: February 18^th, 2006

 

 

Mixed Emotions is the first exhibition to be curated by Tami Katz-Freiman in her new position as chief curator of the Haifa Museum of Art.

 

The exhibition will explore a wide range of human feelings, from the most negative (hate, anger, rage, sorrow, frustration, shame, alienation and estrangement) to the most positive ones (maternal love, romantic love, happiness, joy, compassion, desire, gratitude, yearning, intimacy and hope), as they are represented in contemporary Israeli and international art.

 

Conceived of as the dialectical opposite of reason, emotion was repressed and excluded from the public sphere within modernity. Recently, there's been a change in social, cultural, and scientific perceptions of emotion. Whereas in the past emotions were conceived as mysterious phenomena with no rational explanation (whose expression was perceived as childishness, lack of control and a tendency to unexpected reactions), and as a form of interference in the rational thinking process; today, as part of the development of what is called the “science of emotions,” feelings have been elevated to a new, more esteemed status in public life.

 

In the contemporary Israeli context, the media images of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip are one striking example reflecting the change that has occurred in the way Israeli society confronts emotion. The summer of 2005 was etched in the Israeli collective consciousness in the form of a blazing emotional furnace. The slogan “with sensitivity and determination” hovered around as an ethical code that dictated the army’s conduct. The sight of innumerable addictive scenes of hugs and tears among soldiers, policemen and settlers made it seem as if a big floodgate had burst and a massive wave of refined emotion flooded the whole country. Some called this emotional swirl a “crying ritual,” some called it “the wailing festival”; in any event, it seemed that as if these manipulative images were competing for emotional rating – a fact that raises innumerable questions and thoughts about empathy, identification and rejection.

 

At the end of August, a new television series called “In Therapy” was launched on Israeli cable TV. Focusing daily on therapy sessions between a psychotherapist and his five patients, the series is considered to be a cinematic breakthrough. Following the withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli TV watchers have found themselves in front of their mirror reflection – sitting daily on the psychotherapist’s couch, torn apart and ready as never before to deal with their emotional and psychological complexities. Rami Heuberger, one of the actors in this television series, has put it well by saying that: “Today, if someone doesn’t go to therapy — he’s screwed. In the past someone that went to a shrink was considered to be psycho – today it just means that you are connected to yourself”.

 

The exhibition Mixed Emotions will seek to respond to, and to echo these changes: it brings into the spotlight the representation of human emotions that were excluded for many years by the modernist ethos to the shallow margins of “kitsch” and "schmaltz." It thus marks a central tendency that appeared in the 1980s and developed during the 1990s to refute the hierarchy between body and soul, and to blur the binary opposition of reason and emotion.

 

The works for Mixed Emotions have not been selected on the basis of the passion that had led to their creation nor of the affect may they produce in the viewer. Rather, these works are linked by their interest in taking on some aspect of emotion itself as their subject matter.

 

The exhibition will examine the differences between conceptual and emotional representations; it will investigate the affinity between emotion and language, the way in which emotion is externalized through body language, facial expressions, smiling and crying; it will also examine representations of emotion in Israeli political reality, in adolescent agony, in romantic love, and feelings like compassion and yearning in parent-child relationships.

 

The multi-cultural nature of this exhibition’s subject calls for the participation of both Israeli and international artists who work in various media: painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and video art. Among the participating artists are: Nelly Agassi, Hernan Bas, Boyan, Ofir Dor, Kate Gilmore, Nan Goldin, Nir Hod, Erez Israeli, Amy Jenkins, Eva Koch, Muntean / Rosenblum, Naomi Fisher, Netaly Schlosser, Eli Petel, Jack Pierson, Aïda Ruilova, Bill Viola, and Pavel Wolberg.