Nevet Yitzhak explores Forgotten memories at Wilfrid Israel Museum

Despite a 1984 biography about him written by Naomi Shepherd and a 2017 film about him by Yonatan Nir, Israel’s life is only known to a few historians and art collectors.

The Wilfrid Israel Museum, which opened in 1951, recently opened a new exhibition by artist Nevet Yitzhak, which is worth the trip to Jezreel Valley to see.

“For many years, the museum had an outer and an inner function,” curator Shir Meller-Yamguchi tells me.

The museum was open to the public only on weekends and its former curator, Gabi Maanit, served in that role alongside his work at Hazorea Furniture. The kibbutz members used the museum as a stage for public celebrations, a library and a cultural center.

“I am the first curator who is not a kibbutz member,” she explains.

Meller-Yamguchi invited Yitzhak to explore the collection and the result is “Re-Collection.”

Two visually stunning videos that bring some of the collected figures to life in a tragic, funny, and highly erudite visual tale that fuses German expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang with the humor of Monty Python. A winged figure of an Egyptian maid lifts a flag depicting a pair of hands breaking a rifle, the flag used by Friedrich for his anti-war museum. A brooding oriental deity scans the plains for unusual activity, at times destroying those it deems unfit. As small figures urinate and scatter about, a procession of a man leading the sacred Apis bulls is shown dragging a statue made by Israel when he was alive.

The procession continues to another video, titled The Collector, in which all the figures stand to honor the journey. Behind them is the façade of the Nathan Israel Department Store in Berlin. An heir of the Israel family fortune, Wilfrid forbad the sale of toy guns in the store because he agreed with Friedrich that this brings up young boys to relish violence. In another gallery, one can see a Chinese-made figure of a rag-seller. This was a figure Israel kept to remind himself of the humble origin of his family fortune.

Yitzhak, who created similar awe-inspiring animation with WarCraft, inspired by Afghani war rugs and was shown at Noga Gallery in 2014, is a master storyteller.

Sitting at the well-cooled exhibition space, I watched the videos again and again, each time seeing a small detail or a visual gag I had missed before.

At another space one can meet all the “actors” in the exhibition. The Egyptian maid for example is a wooden statue made by this long-gone servant to house her Ka (soul) in the life to come. At another space of the museum you will see a Hole-mouth Jar with dancing human figures on both sides. A mirror had been placed so you can enjoy both sides of it. Discovered by Jacob Kaplan in 1966, this is an 8,000-year-old prehistoric artwork made to accompany the soul of a human being onward to the great beyond.

When discussing The Collector, Meller-Yamguchi suggests that “this is a department store which functions as a memory museum.” Unlike a department store, which is obliged to inform us what we are buying, the exhibition of the figures does not contain historical information about the items in it.

“It becomes much more personal this way,” Meller-Yamguchi says. “Without the usual labels museums offer, the figures become members of the human family, and also a material that can be used for a new work of art.”

Thanks to the generous support of the German Embassy in Israel and Mifal Hapais Council for Culture and Arts, Re-Collection is able to reclaim and renew a unique collection and a museum that deserves to be much better known within the Israeli art scene. ■