In a world that seems to be hurtling headlong into a doomsday scenario at an ever-increasing pace, it is comforting to know that some things never change. That encouraging thought comes across in the “Common Ground” exhibition currently at the Israel Museum.

This is an inclusive, collaborative, and rolling project with works of vastly differing dimensions and timelines, not to mention stylistic approaches, disciplines, and zeitgeists, all deftly positioned to spawn compelling and reciprocal interfaces. Considering that no less than four curators got in on the logistics act, perhaps that is not too surprising. 

Then again, having a single curator lay down the presentation law to a single artist or a group is one thing; but having multiple curators, each with his or her own field of interest and expertise and, no doubt, point of view as to how the works in question should be displayed, sounds like a minefield in the making.

However, judging by the rapport I encountered at the museum – between senior curator and head of the Department of Israeli Art, Amitai Mendelsohn, and Prehistoric Cultures curator Ahiad Ovadia, who were joined in the curatorial endeavor by senior curator and head of Department of Prints and Drawings Tanya Sirakovich, and Iron Age and Persian Periods curator Pirchia Eyall, the cooperative effort ran pretty smoothly.

“Common Ground” is an expansive offering on all sorts of levels. It incorporates artifacts that are centuries and even millennia old, and works devised and crafted in the past few years. So how do you, for example, get a 10,000-year-old stone mask to sit comfortably alongside a mask that, admittedly, feeds off an archaeological find, at early Bronze Age-Iron Age site Tel Arad but was completed using the latest that 21st-century technology has to offer? The answer to that one is, patently, with ease.

The Mask

The aforementioned twinning features an 8th-millennium BCE red dolomitic limestone mask unearthed at excavations conducted in the Hebron Hills. It is a fetching item that came through its very long interment almost completely unscathed. It is, Ovadia explained, one of a rare group of 16 masks that apparently are the oldest of their kind in the world. That’s quite a coup for the Israel Museum. 

The mask was designed with great care, with eye sockets big enough to offer the wearer – if indeed it was made to be worn – a clear field of vision. There are also detailed incised teeth marks which, Ovadia suggested, may indicate that the mask was not tailored to the human face.

There are also four perforations along the edges, which meant the mask could, in fact, be tied to a person’s face but also, for example, to a pole. So the age-old mask may indeed have been worn or possibly attached to something and waved about on high. All fascinating tales of distant yore.

That archaeological treasure is paired with a 2022 creation by 45-year-old Bezalel Academy of Art and Design graduate Netally Schlosser called Asian West. Schlosser used state-of-the-art technology to get the job done by taking a 3D scan of a stone and complementing it digitally before producing a 3D printout. In terms of the process, nothing could be more different than the handmade mask from all those millennia ago. However, somehow the marriage between ancient and brand-new flows seamlessly.

Newly on show

“Common Ground” not only proffers intriguing contextualization, but it also provides the public with an opportunity to get a first eyeful of some of the archaeological gems that have been lying around the Israel Museum storage facilities for years, just waiting to be dusted down and placed in the spotlight. 

And there are others that took a far shorter route to the display space. “A lot of our artifacts have never been shown before,” Ovadia said. “We brought some of the finds straight from the excavators. We were just waiting for an appropriate exhibition or opportunity. This mask [from the Hebron Hills] was discovered only a few years ago. In fact, the archaeologists haven’t even completed their research on it yet.”

Ovadia said the synergy between new and old is natural. “Here you have a mask looking at you from a distance of 10,000 years, and here you have something looking at you from two years ago, but they are one and the same.” That, basically, is what “Common Ground” – as the title infers – is about.

WE KICKED off the guided tour with the outsized Order of Priorities pastel pencil on paper spread, measuring a full 4.6 m. by 2.75 m., created last year by 52-year-old Netta Lieber Sheffer. The idea of melding artifacts that came into being when the world was a very different place – when the perception of life, the universe, and everything else followed along almost antithetical lines – with works of art produced in this day and age when manufacturers of this or that continue to churn out “time-saving,” effort-obviating, corner-cutting devices in double-quick time, is all spelled out for us in Lieber Sheffer’s work. 

The association that immediately sprang to my British 1970s-informed mind was with the animation of Terry Gilliam for the Monty Python series and movies, whereby he would incorporate famous ancient artifacts into contrasting, often ludicrous, milieus. Order of Priorities, Ovadia explained, is very much the consummation of what the whole exhibition enterprise is about. 

“Each of the curators brought their vision and thoughts, and their artifacts. We brought all things from right across the archaeological wing. It is a cross-wing effort together with Israeli art. We have done things like this before, but this is the first time we have explored this relationship in depth.”

The recently acquired Lieber Sheffer creation spells out the lay of the curatorial land, albeit in a somewhat overcrowded manner. “She took artifacts we have here in the museum,” said Ovadia, pointing out various archaic-looking characters bunched together at very close quarters. “This came from the temple at Hatzeva [in the Arava]. This is from the African collection. And this is the Tel Lachish relief. She took things that were already located here in the museum.”

That sounds right from various standpoints. Since Oct. 7, lines of communication with various parts of the world – for political or logistical reasons – have left something to be desired. And it makes perfect sense to utilize what you have in your own backyard. Perhaps that is yet another ripple from the coronavirus lockdown days. It also cuts down on the carbon footprint of shipping stuff from abroad.

Order of Priorities provided the catalyst for the entire venture. “It opened our eyes and showed us the possibilities offered by a completely modern sketched contemporary work of art, and gave us all these contexts.” 

That, Ovadia said, harks back to the birth of the museum concept. “In practice, she recreated a sort of ‘wonder room’ [aka cabinet of curiosities] of the past, which is the start of the museum. You just had a random collection of things that people began to allocate and categorize.”

There are alluring era-crossing settings all over the showe. “In a nutshell, you can say the whole exhibition focuses on the possibilities of creating threads, not only visually but also in relation to the materials used, subjects, and themes,” Mendelsohn said. 

He said it was the aesthetics side of the art and artifact tracks that led the way. “We, first and foremost, tried to grasp the visual element.” As the corporeal bottom line, what he and his curator colleagues were looking to achieve was an exhibition, which figures. 

“Where things connected was about intuition. When we looked at so many items we said, ‘This reminds me of that.’ Later, things related to the techniques and materials used came into the picture.”

There is clearly a lot of information for the viewer to take in, but Mendelsohn said the curators were not looking to overload us with details. 

“This is not a didactic exhibition in the sense of, for example, covering the entire theme of death in ancient times or in today’s world.” He also believes there is some emotional succor to be had from “Common Ground” and joining the dots between distant yesteryear creations through to where we are at today. 

“There are many avenues which, ultimately, generate something that is appropriate for now and also for ancient times, through visual-material culture. I think that, at this time, in the predicament in which we find ourselves, it is important that people remember the creative dimension that has always existed – in times of war, of crisis, and other times.”

The good news

It was good to hear some positive notions as we wended our way through the display areas with their seemingly disparate, but demonstrably suited, couplings. “We have to keep on going,” Ovadia added. “When I was on reserve duty recently, I took a piece of wood with me to carve. I just had to do something creative with my hands.” And with his spirit, one would assume.

There is a delightful wood etching courtesy of 39-year-old multidisciplinary artist Maayan Elyakim. And a highly personal one it is too, which embraces the concept of death combined with advanced technological know-how. “Here you have an MRI of the artist’s own skull,” Mendelsohn said. “It is a bit disturbing,” he chuckled. 

Elyakim took the imaging output and ran with it to produce a painstakingly formed wooden exemplar of his own head, something along the lines of how it will – presumably – look when he eventually leaves terra firma.

That sits neatly on a tower of Shaker-style nesting boxes, or pantry boxes, which fit into each other snugly or can be extended to produce the mini-totem underpinning for Olivewood Skull made in 2022. “That is based on the tradition of nesting boxes, used by the Shakers in the United States in the 17th century,” Mendelsohn continued. “It is like a babushka arrangement.”

Olivewood Skull is partnered by Miriam Cabessa’s succinctly named oil painting Mummy and a delectable figurine of the Egyptian deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, which dates to the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE and was used to accompany the deceased on their final journey to the afterlife. 

Here, too, the curators crafted a titillating oxymoronic group that feeds off broad temporal slots and seemingly incongruous cultures, as well as contrasting methods of creation. The Cabessa picture evokes the idea of the titular ancient Egyptian ritual object but contains some seemingly discordant details. Getting up close to the large Masonite-anchored work, I noticed strange forms worked into the composition. 

“She used an iron on this. She is unique in that approach,” Mendelsohn observed. “You can see the iron shapes in the background. She works with heat, which she applies to the paint with very rapid movements.” That adds a yin-yang feel to the definitively static mummy figure and broadens the technique’s purview.

There is no missing Sigalit Landau’s contribution in the form of a baptismal font, based on an item she came across in a church in England and, as is her wont, soaked it in the Dead Sea until it became encrusted with a thick layer of sparkling, very salty sediment. That, said Mendelsohn, serves as yet another unlikely interface. 

“This was immersed in the Dead Sea, in the sea of death, and baptismal water traditionally comes from the Jordan River – sweet water – which feeds into the Dead Sea.”

There are plenty of other mutually supportive juxtapositions, such as the incomplete arrangement of fragments of decorative tiles with floral motifs, dating to the 19th century, taken from the site of David’s Tomb in Jerusalem.

At some stage, the tiles were savagely attacked which, as the exhibition information has it, serves as a reminder of the religious tensions in these parts. That is offset and echoed by a brightly polychromic mixed media on paper creation by Tehran-born Elham Rokni, called Wallpaper #2. It invokes the aesthetics of the interior of a mosque dome and other motifs from a culture and society in which Rokni was born but can no longer access in person.

Both the tiles and Wallpaper #2 leave viewers with room to complete the picture with their own imagination. The same can be said for Israel Prize laureate sculptor Micha Ullman’s Iron and Red Sand: 12 Parts installation. The objects arranged in the center of the display space feature parts of chairs, table legs, and other household items that appear to be submerged in the floor. Ullman deftly evokes a sense of flooding, which draws on tsunami damage.

There is yet another attractive thematic pairing between a bunch of ossuaries dating to the 5th-4th millennia BCE and the entertaining, yet disturbing, Israel Trail: The Procession video work by Ayelet Carmi and Meirav Herman. “The ossuaries contained bones collected from graves, so they were detached from the ground,” Ovadia explained. “In the video, you see people making their way along the trail but without touching the ground.” 

You certainly get that sense of disconnection from the video installation as women and men of all ages go through a Sisyphean ordeal. Perhaps there is a message there about connection and identity for us all. ■

‘Common Ground’ closes in October 2024. For more information: www.imj.org.il/en