The Fall.
The Fall from Innocence.
The Innocence.
The Fall as empowerment or as shame.
Accepting the verdict as shame-inflicting guilt or as shame which does not rise to say ’this is unjust.’
The shame of punishment. The shame of inactivity.
The shame of loosing the image of liberty-rationality.
Shame accompanies us since the moment of our birth in the Story of Stories and in daily life.
Shame is a narrow/wide concept; a suspected/important part of our lives from the moment we enter the world to the moment we take leave of it.
The artists participating in this exhibition try, through various types of media, to delve into the subject of shame. They include us, the viewers, not only in the fruit of inspection, but also in the act of inspecting. They reveal to the viewer the nakedness of shame, in order to inspect that human-social feeling, to denounce it, criticize it, or awaken it.
In a society constructed of different nationalities, immigrants, refugees and foreign workers, the subject of shame is a daily cause of friction between one and one’s own and between one and one’s surroundings.
Many aspects are unique to the various types of shame; other aspects are common to all shames. What happens to shame, be it small or great, and what happens to private secrets when they are displayed and exhibited? When they are exposed to the public through the eyes of 15 artists, 12 writers, and a radio station for youth? What happens to our shames when they meet the shames of others in broad daylight?
The texts dealing with shame from an intimate, personal angle present private incidents, or personal points of view, by using the written word. They present incidents concerning the human spirit and soul, incidents one bumps into (or gets stuck with) on a daily basis.
High school students discuss the subject of shame on radio. They discover that the concept of shame is influenced, among other things, by age. Age influences the extremity of one’s emotions and one’s totality or completeness of grasp. Does the acquired wisdom of age weaken the totality of younger soul’s comprehension? Does it help us become more forgiving and less critical in our approach to the causes of shame?
Wherefrom appear in us the first voices of shame? Are these the voices of our elders? The voice of society? Do the stories we hear or read carry these voices? Do these voices stem from inner laws or external ones?
The sun reddened and blazed because of what it saw on that same daily, day-to-sea voyage it makes, that starry tour it takes,
Spilling its fury and angst on the waters, there it cools in the horizons faraway, diving into the cold water.
As faraway from us as possible,
Perhaps because it was ashamed
For what it has witnessed
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
