Participants: Haviva Barkol, Dvora Harel, Malka Cohen, Ruti Mizrahi, Tikva Sedes, Mimi Rosenberg, Ada Rahamim, Stav Asrasa, Shay Motza, Ori Motza, student group of the 'Yachad' school: Aviel, Noa, Ester, Hana, Anna, Gabi, Skarlet, David, Murat, Michael, Aviv, Denis, Masaret, Mastuwal, Solomon, Eshete, Max, Ronen, Gabrielle, Natalie, Fasil, Zehava, Yenurak, Ergoye, Izhak, Mesaret, Aly, Glores, Irachoo, Lior, Ruslan and Bnei Akiva youth movement: Tigist Dreso, Bortokan Samnach, Ester Ayala, Asoblo Bagda, Kahson Bagda, Adiso Mengesha, Yonatan mangesha, Talia Harband.
Inbal Helzer is an architect, artist, and teacher, Helzer lives, creates, and teaches in Holon. She holds an MFA in Arts (Betzalel) and a BA in Architecture (Bezalel). Helzer is involved in collaborative projects that combine locality and creation to develop and integrate practices that promote an environmental-public-imaginal-playful worldview.
"Behind the street were only sand-dunes. When I was maybe in 6th grade, they took us to the dunes, while they were filming a movie called Fortuna, to act as an audience. Today, it's where Ayalon Freeway passes." (Haviva Barkol)
The Exhibition "Mini Jessy Cohen" was created at the Israeli Center for Digital Art, situated in Jessy Cohen neighborhood, Holon, in a process that took a few months. This process is a part of the Complete Jessy Cohen Project, founded in 2016 by the artistic duo Effi and Amir in collaboration with a group of residents from the neighborhood: Igal Ophir, Yaakov Erlich, Haviva Barkol, Pnina Barkol, Dvora Harel, Malka Cohen, Ruti Mizrahi, Tikva Sedes, Rachel Polet, Mimi Rosenberg, Ada Rahamim, among many others.
In 2019, the museum's steering committee decided to focus on 'Home and Housing.' This theme was chosen because the neighborhood faces a radical change expected to transform its character entirely. The municipal outline plan for the next few years, which includes a significant urban renewal, evokes hopes as well as fears in the neighborhood's residents. Following the call for bids, the museum team appointed artist Inbal Helzer to lead the project, and together they decided to focus on building a model of the Jessy Cohen Neighborhood as an opportunity to revisit the neighborhood's past and present.
At the heart of the exhibition is a 1:200 paper model of the neighborhood. The model is made up of accurate yet far-fetched descriptions of the neighborhood's residential buildings. The construction process fluctuated between adhering to true historical and contemporary narratives, documenting personal memories and collective stories, and representing ambitions, hopes, and everyday dreams.
The work was established in a series of creative sessions with different groups of Jessy Cohen residents: a group of women from the museum's founding team, eighth and ninth graders from the neighborhood middle school, 'Yachad,' as well as kids from the 'Gym' project at the Israeli Center for Digital Art.
A video, which accompanies the model, invites the viewers to observe an upgraded reality or to imagine life in Jessy Cohen as an internet phenomenon. The video comprises moments of "togetherness" that exist between the physical and the digital realities. These images, replicated from social apps and internet phenomena, converge inside the paper-made Jessy Cohen, in a mix of physical, imagined reality and technologically manufactured reality (in apps such as Tik Tok, social media, and YouTube clips).
The model and the video present a subjective reality: meaningful moments that reside between memory and imagination. Each group created for itself a fantastic yet casual space that reflects a collective culture. These moments are joint in a non-judgmental mosaic of fascination with the concurrence of actions and emotions: empathy, virtual friendship, violence, nostalgia, and nonsense.
Participants: Haviva Barkol, Dvora Harel, Malka Cohen, Ruti Mizrahi, Tikva Sedes, Mimi Rosenberg, Ada Rahamim, Stav Asrasa, Shay Motza, Ori Motza, student group of the 'Yachad' school: Aviel, Noa, Ester, Hana, Anna, Gabi, Skarlet, David, Murat, Michael, Aviv, Denis, Masaret, Mastuwal, Solomon, Eshete, Max, Ronen, Gabrielle, Natalie, Fasil, Zehava, Yenurak, Ergoye, Izhak, Mesaret, Aly, Glores, Irachoo, Lior, Ruslan and Bnei Akiva youth movement: Tigist Dreso, Bortokan Samnach, Ester Ayala, Asoblo Bagda, Kahson Bagda, Adiso Mengesha, Yonatan mangesha, Talia Harband.
Inbal Helzer
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