Images of Israel traveling across China

April 8, 2009 - 9:26 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Pop Culture, Travel 

Sally Macklef's CactusPassover in the Far East? Old news. Israelis are known for traversing the world with nothing but backpacks. It was on a trip like this that Tel Aviv’s Sally Macklef fell in love with her camera as a conduit for artistic expression.

Now Macklef’s work has come full-circle, with her images joining those of 59 other Israeli artists to form Inside Israel, an exhibition which opened at the Three Gorges Museum in the Chinese city of Chongqing in December and is set to travel to the region’s leading museums and cultural institutions for the remainder of the year.

This isn’t the first time that Israeli art is being exported to China en masse, and the exhibit comes in the context of increases in Israeli-Chinese tourist and cultural cooperation over the past year.

Macklef’s work often portrays Tel Aviv as a place where the balance of ancient life gets lost in the shuffle of today’s concrete wastelands (pictured is her disaffected work Cactus), but her Inside Israel images of Hassidim performing holiday rituals come decidedly from a place of inspiration and appreciation, as she explained recently to The Jerusalem Post:

“All this happiness fascinates me, this power of community,” Macklef explained. “I realized that when you’re not happy, you can’t believe in God.”

Inside Israel’s 180 pieces depict our country as a place where natural wonders, community, contemporary urban life, ancient ethnicities and architectural marvels can be observed, as curated by Three Gorges Museum staffer Yang Chaupang and Israeli art scenesters Doron Pollack, Iris Elhanani and Esther Dollinger.

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