Milestone

Maya Zehavi's exhibition, addresses the landscape as it becomes sculpture through photographs taken in Ein Harod and Beit HaArava—the kibbutz that Yechiel Shemi helped found and whose members, after its abandonment in 1948, including Shemi, went on to establish Kibbutz Kabri. The stones that Maya Zehavi brought from Beit HaArava became a series of photograms, which also gave the exhibition its title.

The exhibition revolves around three main axes: the first consists of landscape photographs taken in Ein Harod; the second comprises photographs from Beit HaArava that echo a journey in the opposite direction to the one taken by Yechiel Shemi, motivated by a desire to bring Beit HaArava to Kabri; the third is the landscape of Kabri, visible through the windows into and from the exhibition space, becoming a dynamic frame that shifts and changes according to the time of day and the weather conditions.

Alongside these works, the exhibition includes two works by Shemi: a pencil landscape drawing from the Beit HaArava period and a model for the sculpture Cave. In many respects, these two works function as the exhibition's core and central point of reference.

The exhibition examines the boundaries of the photographic medium by extending it into a physical, sculptural experience and by exploring different ways of using the medium. It creates a double stretching—of both the image and the concept of time—revealing the flexibility of the photographic material and its multiple possibilities for reconstructing or transforming dimensions, compositions, and situations drawn from reality.

Maya works with analog cameras, and the processes of developing and printing are an integral part of her artistic practice. For example, the photograph Pier was intentionally printed on expired photographic paper in order to introduce a sense of mystery and distance from reality. Such paper has very low contrast—it contains no true white, only shades of gray. As a result, the print takes on a silvery tone, resonating with other worlds.

In Maya's words:"My works begin with encounters with the real. They echo moments from immediate reality, detach themselves from it, alter its internal structure, and generate new systems of relationships. Through photography, installation, video, and sculpture, I seek to express the ways in which things in the world permeate and touch our lives... The use of everyday images alongside archaeological artifacts that I create, stones, and objects enables me to forge connections between the personal and the public, and to reflect on the spectrum between the universal and the particular, and between the metaphysical and the material. It is toward this connection that I aspire."