MY LIFE AT THE MOMENT

What happens to artistic creation when war becomes a

prolonged reality—at home, at the front, and in between?

Beit Avi Chai’s exhibition brings together works by five

notable Jerusalem-based artists, created over two turbulent

years, from the massacre and surprise attack on Israel on

Simchat Torah 5784 through the ceasefire on the eve of

Simchat Torah 5786. These were two Israeli years whose

events, in any other country, might have filled decades

of history—events that met artistic practice in different

ways: directly or indirectly, explicitly or abstractly. Executed

in diverse media—painting, drawing, photography, and

print—the works offer a window into the artistic workshop:

instinctive responses that investigate and probe, registering

moods and emotions that breached the protected space of

the studio and fractured it.

The exhibition takes its title from a line by the Jerusalem

poet Israel Eliraz (1936–2017), who urged us to look at

reality through art—to isolate the moment, with all the

contradictions and emotions it carries. This is the perspective

we seek to offer here as well, after two years of war that has

not fully ended. The reckoning remains unfinished.

This is our life at the moment.