Israel was completely stunned by the October 7 attack. In the following days and weeks, the country was marked by an overwhelming sense of speechlessness. People were unable to speak, express themselves or respond, as if paralyzed by shock, horror and the difficulty of absorbing what had actually happened.
Nevertheless, from the outset artists began responding to the situation in real time by uploading powerful visual images to the social networks. This small trickle turned into a torrential rain, as creators from various disciplines, among them painters, illustrators, designers, graphics artists, poets, and even AI artists, began uploading more and more images.
The saying “when the cannons roar, the muses are silent” is well known. Yet today we clearly are witnessing a historic moment, whose global ramifications will accompany us for years to come. As time goes by, we will continue to encounter more and more such works of art as artists and creators respond to this topic. Indeed, their artistic expression already appears to contradict the prevailing sense of speechlessness, showing that there is no artistic silence, even if we have not yet found the words.
The Dada movement began as a protest against the horrors of the First World War. Hence the Janco-Dada Museum, which is dedicated to the work of Marcel Janco, one of the original founders of the Dada movement, decided to give these works a platform through the unusual step of uploading these images to the museum’s official Instagram page. During the month of November, works sent to us by top Israeli artists were posted to this page every day. These works were selected for their direct, painful and revealing reflections on and documentation of the general mood and social reality in Israel during the difficult period of the Iron Swords War. Some of these works have been selected for screening in the exhibition, and others are original works brought from Israel specifically for this exhibition.
In addition, artist Adi Drimer, who survived the attack on her home kibbutz on that black Sabbath, has created a wall mural titled “Re’im is My Home”. The mural depicts the frantic messages from her kibbutz WhatsApp group during the first 24 hours of the massacre.
Curator
Nitsan Shuval-Abiri
- Special Project
- New Exhibition
- New Exhibition
- New Exhibition
- At the museum and Instagram
