The unsolved 1931 murder of Jakob Freudenheim in the Weimar Republic (pre-Nazi Germany) is a recurring motif in Ronit Porat’s collage-based installation. When the elderly Jewish bachelor was found dead in his Berlin apartment, the case became tabloid fodder, fueled by the testimonies of his neighbors in Prenzlauer Berg.

            Porat focuses on how the neighbors in Freudenheim’s building turned on one another through rumors and mutual accusations, drawing the police into endless witch hunts. As this disorienting cycle of blame reflects a creeping police state and an atmosphere of shared suspicion, the small tragedy also foreshadows the Weimar Republic’s descent into fascism.

            Porat’s work highlights sudden shifts and tensions in the act of observation. She interweaves images of watchful animals with surrealist photographs by Paul Nougé, whose subjects often avert their gaze from the camera, redirecting ours.

            The installation fosters a voyeuristic atmosphere through the use of special binoculars, known as a stereoscope, which create a three-dimensional image, and by inviting viewers to peer through a hole in the wall into the building’s hallway.

Photographer Oren Ziv examines the conduct of the Israeli police in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, focusing on the treatment of citizens detained for criticizing the war in Gaza. The project documents the distribution of detainees’ photographs and mugshots to news outlets and social media, violating their legal rights. ­­While none of the detained individuals has been indicted for criminal wrongdoing, they all experienced widespread shaming and threats following the dissemination of their arrest photos.

            For the series Portraits of Fascism, Ziv collaborated with some of these detainees to reclaim their images. He gathered their reflections on these experiences, and re-photographed them, this time holding their own mugshots. “The very images meant to degrade and create a chilling effect become symbols of defiance,” he explains. “The individuals were photographed anew, this time on their own terms.”

The photos held in these portraits were taken by the police and distributed either through official police channels or via National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and other unofficial channels. The images originally appeared in stories published in +972 and Local Call online magazines. Excerpts from their testimonies are also on view in the exhibition.

In her series Re-Threading, artist Nardeen Srouji explores Tatreez, a Palestinian embroidery tradition featuringvisual patterns that carry meaning and are tied to specific places and phases of life. Her work begins from the fact that the Nakba—the mass displacement of Palestinian communities and cultures—disrupted the understanding of Tatreez symbols and meanings, although Palestinian culture continues to value their aesthetics and the resilience of the women who preserve this craft.

            Following research into Tatreez symbols and details, Srouji proposes contemporary reinterpretations. She dramatically magnifies a chosen motif, subsequently weaving the image in yarn into a charged material: metal fencing used for private and commercial divisions, as well as for security checkpoints in Israel and abroad.

            In Twin Trees, Srouji recreates two blue cypress trees—symbols of longevity, rootedness, a spiritual connection between land and sky, and territorial continuity—which she encountered at the edge of a Jerusalem funerary garment. Her mournful image, created within an oppressive structure, doubles as an assertion of cultural flourishing and resilience. In this work, Srouji engages the full spectrum of grief, represented by the color blue in Palestinian embroidery.

Inspired by strangers’ probing looks on the streets of Jerusalem, artist and activist Mushon Zer-Aviv set out more than a decade ago to create Normaliz.ing—a project that constructs a spectrum of social “normalcy”based on the collective, aggregated judgments of its participants.

            A web-based program designed to be experienced on a mobile phone, Normaliz.ing first takes a photo of you, the user, then asks you to rate the features of others, and finally places you on a map of normalcy, according to the patterns it deduces from others’ visual snap judgments.

            “Today’s systematic discrimination is aggregated, amplified, and conveniently hidden behind the seemingly objective ‘black box’ of Artificial Intelligence,” Zer-Aviv explains, “yet it is society at large that absorbs, approves, and propagates these ideas.”

            Zer-Aviv views today’s AI as an outgrowth of 19th-century human classification systems. Normaliz.ing is presented in the context of these archives, specifically Alphonse Bertillon’s spoken portrait (portrait parlé), a precursor to the modern mugshot.

Software developer: Adam Kariv Produced with the support of Science Gallery, Dublin

Rachel Anyo reproduces a single image hundreds of times to create digital collage installations featuring abstract forms, otherworldly creatures, and unexpected structures. In Encoding, she constructs an installation using a fragment of a nude self-portrait in which she deliberately turns away from the viewer. She refashions herself as architectural motifs, such as a pillar or a fence, or as a futuristic suit of armor, forming a fabric out of her extended body that both contains and protects.

            This work connects to Anyo’s broader interest in redefining the concept of camouflage. Instead of disguising one’s body from potential threats as a defense mechanism, she imagines a body that produces its own context: expanding its sense of belonging as it moves through the world.

In an effort to connect his personal experiences to the broader conditions of discrimination faced by the Ethiopian community in Israel, Ephraim Wasse’s photographs often feature high-contrast black-and-white imagery, as well as fragmented, bodily forms.

Of a Body, created during Wasse’s recent teaching residency abroad, explores these concerns with new visual strategies. The artist describes these organic, highly abstract self-portraits as a search for a personal typography. The images become individual letters in a loving, expressive photo-body language.

            To make these works, Wasse employs three elements: his nude body; a camera with a strong black diffusion lens typically intended for creating soft, idealized landscape photographs; and a room flooded with natural light.

            Bathed in intense light and rendered with a shallow depth of field, Wasse’s elemental poses become glowing, painterly blurs. These mysterious images emerge from a near-total dissolution of the distinctionbetween figure and ground.

Laila Abd Elrazaq works with the handmade, low-tech, and unapologetic ethos of zine culture, transformingintimate stories into irreverent critiques of the societies she navigates. Conveying a profound understanding of how state surveillance impacts marginalized communities—fostering paranoia, enforcing rigid norms, and encouraging self-policing—she embraces laughter not only as healing but also as a potent tool of resistance.

            In Ethnic Cleansing, Abd Elrazaq reflects on the nose job she underwent as a teenager in an effort to conform to conventional beauty standards, a choice informed by years of bullying from Arab peers for herhooked “Jewish nose.”

            These themes are explored in the installation, comprising four bodies of work, unified by their focus on eyes and noses: An epic scroll that unfolds a tragicomic story about the artist “losing” her nose; digital drawings in which she encounters herself in various forms, including as a meddling cyclops; archival sketches from the period of her rhinoplasty; and a group of digital collages for viewers to take home.