Artist: Meydad Eliyahu
Curator: Tal Schwartz
Pendulum is an invitation to feel the perpetual motion inherent in understanding and interpreting the world. The installation challenges the notion of static perspectives, urging viewers to perceive the fluid, borderless nature of cultural and personal narratives. It is an invitation into a realm of dynamic exploration, intricately weaving together the artist’s personal experiences and diverse cultural and geographical influences. The installation tries to encapsulate four major pendulum-like movements, each representing a dynamic aspect of Eliyahu’s artistic exploration.
Affected by the war in Israel and the region the works at the exhibition embody a constant movement of destruction and construction. Eliyahu composes within the space using both fictional and realistic images, layering multiple symbols to create and deconstruct meaning. In the act of printing, he strives for an abstraction of perspective, stepping back from purely interpretive actions. This approach often renounces traditional symbolism, offering a renewed viewpoint driven by the context and relationships between motifs, potentially negating “absolute” values reflective of today’s complex realities. The same motifs might construct a self-portrait in one work and a mound of ruins in another, illustrating how his prints are not mere romantic representations of ruins but are themselves composite sites of the realistic and the fictional.
Eliyahu seeks to decipher the intricate relationship between his personal story and the broader narrative of what it means to be Jewish and Israeli. His movement between Cochin, India, Jerusalem, and Krakow enables him to construct a rich tapestry of symbols, serving as a vehicle for exploring themes of migration, identity, and conflict. Cochin, the seat of his family roots, brings forth motifs such as parrots, emblematic of its rich Jewish culture. Jerusalem, his primary place of residence and creation, imbues his works with the palpable presence of conflict. Krakow, a place where he has worked as an artist and curator, echoes the profound Jewish history now largely absent, yet materially preserved.
The artist’s exploration extends to the oscillation between the oblivion and presence of Jewish culture in places where Jewish life has vanished, such as Krakow and Cochin. His work in these places resonates with their lost Jewish histories, reflecting an exploration of memory, absence, and the passage of time. The expressions of Jewish culture are always intertwined with broader relationships across space and time, never existing in isolation. Even in places where there is no longer a significant Jewish presence, these cultural expressions continue to wander and move, reflecting a constant transition from oblivion to presence.
The pendulum also swings between existential anxiety and a burst of creativity and vitality. Eliyahu’s frenetic working method reflects a chronic discomfort and the feeling that there is no safe place, necessitating a dispersion of action. This movement from anxiety to creativity illustrates a dynamic interplay between tension and artistic expression, continually seeking signs of life within the constant conflict.
