The most important work that no one saw at the Venice Biennale has found a home.
Israeli artist Ruth Patir’s video installation (M)otherland (2024), which was selected for Israel’s pavilion at the 2024 Biennale, was caught up in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the resulting war. When the Biennale opened in April 2024, the artist and the pavilion’s curators—Mira Lapidot of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Tamar Margalit of CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo—barred it from view in protest of the ongoing conflict.
Now, the work has been acquired by New York’s Jewish Museum.
The series of videos centers on digitally animated versions of Iron Age fertility goddesses, using them to explore, as the museum said in press materials, “the complex intersection of gender, motherhood, and the tensions surrounding fertility and reproductive rights in today’s world.”
The original four videos of the five-part series deal with a matter of reproductive health and public policy that is perceived starkly differently in the artist’s country and in the U.S., where the work will take up residence: in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. Whereas some on the political right in the States strongly oppose the procedure, the artist explained in press materials that in Israel it is “subsidized and extremely encouraged” by a state wishing to expand its population. After being diagnosed with a gene mutation, the artist underwent fertility treatment; the videos employ the ancient figures, widely believed to have served as fertility amulets, to stand in for her and her female confidantes.
“I was overwhelmed to see how state politics is exposed in these fertility clinics, in how the womb feels like a technological instrument,” said Patir. “Being there I felt like a vessel, and documenting my experience felt like the only thing to do.”
The fifth part, meanwhile, was created after the Hamas attack and features the Iron Age figurines taking part in a processional march to express their rage and sadness.
“With this acquisition, we are honored to bring Ruth Patir’s powerful and poignant work to U.S. audiences, underscoring our commitment to collecting and showcasing work that invites dialogue and reflects on universal issues that demonstrate our shared humanity,” said the museum’s director, James S. Snyder, in press materials.
Those U.S. audiences won’t get to see the work quite yet: the Jewish Museum is in the midst of a reinstallation of its collection galleries, slated for completion in fall 2025. But it will go on view at the Tel Aviv Museum in March 2025.
“We (Tamar, Mira, and I) have become the news, not the art,” said Patir in a statement on Instagram in April. “And if I am given such a remarkable stage, I want to make it count. I firmly object to cultural boycott, but since I feel there are no right answers, and I can only do what I can with the space I have, I prefer to raise my voice with those I stand with in their scream, ceasefire now, bring the people back from captivity. We can’t take it anymore.”
Patir and the curators posted a sign on the pavilion door saying that the “artist and curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when a cease-fire and hostage release agreement is reached.”
Despite ongoing negotiations, no such agreement has materialized. The Hamas attack killed some 1,200 men, women, and children, and Hamas took 254 people hostage. In the Israeli military campaign that has followed, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza estimates that some 44,466 have been killed and 105,358 injured as of December 2. The U.N. Human Rights Office said in November that nearly 70 percent of verified fatalities in Gaza were women and children. In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of defense Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
