Exhibitions
Between the Visible and the Unseen
Nechama Levendel
Dates: November 27, 2025 – May 9, 2026
curators: Isi Winter Abekasis and Meyrav Shay
Between the Visible and the Unseen
The space that unfolds between the visible and the unseen is an intermediate realm, where subtle, at times elusive, traces that hold great human depth are unearthed.
Nechama Levendel operates within this space. She works with used books — objects steeped in meaning and memory — and breaks them down into material layers that formulate a new visual language. In her hands, the covers, faded pages, fabrics, and glue residues are transformed into history-carrying raw materials. In a precise, patient, and intuitive process, she removes, pastes, conceals, and reveals. Action after action, layer by layer, the book loses its function as an agent of knowledge and is reimagined as a physical and mental object. “Time is my palette,” says Levendel, and indeed, time is present in her work not only as a theme but also as a material element, manifested in the creases, glue stains, faded colors, and the traces of touch.
Between the visible and the unseen, there are also impressions of touch, scratches, fingerprints or footprints on soft clay, which become a silent testimony to human existence in processes of creation, time, and memory. Whether it is an ancient potter whose fingerprint remained on the ceramicware before it was fired, an animal that walked on a Roman roof tile and left a footmark on it, an artist who adds layers upon layers of paper into an artwork, or archaeological artifacts – all express the tension between the fleeting action and continuous presence.
Levendel’s work does not set out to recount or reconstruct a story, but rather to guide our gaze towards what was erased. The words disappear beneath layers of paper, but continue to resonate through their absence. Her practice can be likened to “reverse archaeology” – not the one that excavates the hidden, but the one that entombs the visible in order to create a new memory out of it. If the archaeologist wishes to shed light on what has been forgotten, Levendel allows the material to preserve its essence.
The interaction between Levendel’s work and the archaeological exhibits takes place on a deeper level of action. The exhibits – animal and human footprints on sun-dried roof tiles, mat traces on the bottom of pottery, or the potter’s fingerprints on ceramicware – all seemingly random, but became a testament to life and creation. These are signs that were stamped in the soft clay unintentionally, and preserved on the ground, like an imprint of human presence. They do not recount the official history but rather expose its margins, the quotidian, the moment, the touch. They attest to the unseen parts of life in the past.
Levendel works with vestiges and time. The layers of paper that she pastes, the jute textures, the fading, tearing, and silence, all bear witness. She leaves space for the absence, for the silence, for a layer that is not seen, but heard.
The work 07102023, created in the wake of Oct 7, embodies the essence of her artistic path. Layers of book pages in different languages – Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, Russian, English, and Spanish – are stacked on top of one another. The words are erased, but the multitude of languages is preserved as one breath. Their diversity melts into a tapestry of pain and hope, and the entire piece serves as a material memorial of sorts. Levendel does not describe the event, but allows it to exist as a material, as silence, as a testimony that emerges from the layers.
The exhibition Between the Visible and the Unseen echoes the link between art and archaeology. Both languages involve working with time and material: One removes layers of earth to uncover, the other stacks layers of paper to contain. Both touch on one essence – the human experience.
This conjures a layered viewing experience: Ancient artifacts inscribed with traces of touch, footprints, and hand impressions; and contemporary artworks created from layer upon layer of paper, silence, and stillness. Between them stretches a shared expanse of matter, memory, and time, where every layer reveals and conceals.
The exhibition Between the Visible and the Unseen focuses on the creator’s touch on the material leaving a mark on intervals of time and an archaeological longing for a memory that was uncovered in resonates in layers of paper and material, between what was said and the unsaid things held in it.
Curators: Isi Winter Abekasis and Meyrav Shay
* The archeological artifacts are courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority
About the artist | Nechama Levendel is an international artist who has created a distinctive art language, with which she has been making art for more than 25 years, exhibited in Israel and worldwide.
Artist’s website: https://www.nechamalevendel.com/en
Touching the Silk, the Warm Earth
Orit Ishay
Dates: May 21, 2025 – October 25, 2025
curators: Nitza Perry and Meyrav Shay
Orit Ishay’s exhibition “Touching the Silk, the Warm Earth” inhabits the realm that unfolds between archeological layers and layers of consciousness, between material excavation and the exploration of identity. The exhibition offers a complex, open, and at times challenging encounter between ancient artefacts and a contemporary artistic stance that explores, examines, and sometimes questions what is ostensibly sound and stable. Ishay’s works are intimately linked to the material, to the physical domain and to textures, striving to go beyond the relics’ nature as evidence, and reach at the image, the conflict, and the story they hold. Using an artistic practice comprised of disassembly, processing, painting, photography, and reassembly, she sets out to dust off the archeological findings and breathe a new life into them, a different life that at times may be alienated and other times poetic.
The works in the exhibition are rooted in the observation of archaeological artifacts – mainly those on view in the museum’s permanent display — chosen for their shapes, the material they are made of, or the historical story they embody. Each selected item has undergone a process of transformation that included decontextualization, visual processing, and muting or heightening its colors. Thus, for instance, an ancient ceremonial chalice gains an entirely new visual presence, antique coins are presented as colorful surfaces that resemble layers of time, and antique pottery is removed from context and function as formal symbols of an entire period. Ishay also responds to findings that are not currently on display at the museum – like the Philistine bird figurine or the Philistine hat from the Canaanite period. These became the triggers for other works, echoing the layers of history in the region and exploring how archaeological knowledge itself is processed, interpreted, and presented to us.
The exhibition’s title Touching the Silk, the Warm Earth holds persistent tension: On the one hand, the silk – delicate, taut, almost ungraspable; and on the other hand – the heavy earth from which the relics are dug out, the irrefutable evidence of the existence of nations and cultures, at times they are also a source of disputes and conflicts, fraught with questions of belonging and ownership.
The Land of Israel served as a secondary trade route alongside the Silk Road and a significant stop that carried social and financial importance for merchants travelling through the region; a trade and cultural route that facilitated contact and connections between worlds, between East and West, and between sacred and secular, becoming a bridge between cultures and as the cradle of the three monotheistic religions. Despite its branding as a “land of milk and honey,” the Land of Israel also has a history of bloody conflicts and fraught memories, which Ishay does not evade but rather examines with a critical, compassionate, and sometimes ironic eye.
Touching the Warm Earth sends us to the tangible, heavy, and grounded. In her work, Ishay shifts between these two poles. She expresses gentleness next to coarseness, softness alongside formal strength, and lucid simplicity versus conceptual depth.
The works in the exhibition range from direct responses to artifacts in the collection to works that came about through associations conjured by the encounter with the museum, the permanent display, and the local context. Their placement in a space that exhibits centuries and millennia old historical objects weaves a hybrid and poetic syntax that confronts the viewer with the fragility of narratives and opens up
the possibility of a new perspective, not only on history, but also on identity and on how we formulate our own story.
The archeological findings are courtesy of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project, The Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University.
A jewel to corrupt
Dates: September 5, 2024 – March 27, 2025
curators: Nitza Perry and Meyrav Shay
Jewelry is often discovered in archaeological excavations and is an important component of material culture. Their importance is related to the archaeological context; knowing where jewelry was discovered and in what surroundings can clarify the meaning of the single jewel or the collection of jewels.
Information about the role of jewelry in the ancient world can be found in the objects themselves, in their depictions in paintings, reliefs and more. In addition to being beautiful objects that arouse curiosity and wonder, jewelry in ancient times had many meanings beyond adorning the body. Among other things, jewelry symbolized wealth and social status, signified ethnic, religious or cultural affiliation, and expressed hierarchy and power. Yet another function of jewelry was as amulets for worship and protection.
The exhibition examines the power inherent in jewelry to disrupt social orders in the past and present, in archeology and contemporary art, and deals with the use of jewelry as an object that subverts and influences movements from both reality and thinking, and secrets that pass between cultures.
Participants: Avner Finchover, Eyal Sasson, Shay Eid Aloni, Mira Mailor, Bracha Guy, Dafna Alon, Edith Ben Gira, Shaian Rose Ben Sira, Dania Chilminsky
"What Will You Drink?" - Water, Tea, and Coffee in Art and Archeology
Dates: January 25, 2024 – August 30, 2024
Curators: Sigal Manor Banga, Meyrav Shay
What will you drink? water? tea? coffee? A trivial question addressed to a guest entering the house and conveying hospitality. Hospitality customs vary in different cultures, but in all cultures offering a guest a drink of water is the simplest way to make friends with him or her. In the exhibition, we explored our culture of hospitality through art and archaeology.
In the archaeological part of the exhibition, artifacts from a variety of periods are presented that teach about the different uses and customs throughout the ages. Compared to the archaeological finds, in the artistic part of the exhibition, the artworks wander between the physical and realistic images of water, tea and coffee, and their metaphorical meaning. The exhibition was supposed to open on the sixteenth of November, 2023, but time froze on the seventh of October, and it was not clear when it would begin to thaw.
Eight female artists and a male artist were chosen and only one space in the exhibition space was not occupied yet. Then we came across Anat Or Magal’s article in “Portfolio” magazine about the paintings of Talia Kotz Shamir, who lost her brother Aviv’s family on the seventh of October 2023. The work of Talia Kotz Shamir is a monument to the everyday domestic moments, to the pieces of life that were cruelly torn from our world. The national disaster that befell us as individuals and as a nation shook the foundations. The house, which was a fortress, meeting and entertaining space, was destroyed.
Participating artists: Chanchal Banga, Shlomit Bauman, Lili Fisher, Dalia Hay Acco, Miho Kataoka Erlich, Talya Kutz Shamir, Debbie Oshrat, Yaara Rabinovitch, Hilla Spitzer, Vera Wallerstein
The archeological findings are courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
jug and now - contemporary art
Dates: January 11, 2023 – June 30, 2023
curators: Nitza Perry and Meyrav Shay
jug and now is the first exhibition of contemporary art in the museum.
It is an exhibition of Israeli art chosen to correspond with archeology and with the museum space where the exhibits are placed.
It is shown in the halls and among the exhibits, holding a dialogue with the permanent exhibition in the museum. The exhibition examines the findings of the past versus contemporary creation, while raising questions about the essence of creation and discovery, tradition and innovation, the study of the ancient past and the interpretation of the present. Pottery is the most common find in archaeological digs. Fragments and pottery are the physical remains left behind by man, as opposed to the spiritual remains (such as poetry, philosophy and more).
The exhibition seeks to examine the Jug as a visual expression, as a message conveying information that teaches about the different layers of culture.
The works of the artists in the exhibition examine various perspectives, including the role of the Jug In today’s consumer culture, and anthropological issues that come to us from the dirt and from a distance of thousands of years back. These are questions that lead us to examine ourselves today and to ponder how and whether a culture can continue to preserve itself or fail.
Participating artists: Etti Abergel, Liat Elbeling, Raanan Haralaf, Orit Yishai, Yitzhak Livna, Ila Netzer,
David Adika, Ruth Patir, Yosef Crispel, Lehi Turgeman
