Two new video works are shown in this new exhibition by Ayelet Carmi and Meirav Heiman: Bliss (2025) – screened for the first time – and Zahara (2021), in its museum premiere. Despite being very different, both videos offer visions of a parallel world, one that seems to be familiar, though not of this time and place. Zahara is based on the tragic story of Zahara Levitov (1927–1948), one of Israeli’s first military pilots. The film reimagines what happened after her plane crashed in Jerusalem’s Valley of the Cross, as she and an older woman make their way through modern city streets. In Bliss a group of women escape an unknown calamity to create a new communal life in tune with the seasons and cycles of nature, building a human column that takes shape before our eyes.

Together these works exemplify the conceptual world of Carmi and Heiman: an archetypal female world that bases itself on larger-than-life historical figures while presenting ordinary women with whom anyone can identify or empathize. The exhibition also connects to Anna Ticho (1894–1980. It is interesting to read Carmi and Heiman’s works through the prism of Ticho’s drawings of Jerusalem and of women. Her aging women of wisdom resonate with Carmi and Heiman’s videos.