The Phantoms of District 9 - exhibition opening

Imagine the city is a body, and every demolished building is a severed limb. The exhibition "The Phantoms of District 9" examines East Tel Aviv from a new perspective: not only through what exists but also through what is absent.

Nitzan Cohen, a film and theater creator, participated in research conducted by the Tel Aviv Municipality's Conservation Department, which focused on the neighborhoods of District 9 – Hatikva, Ezra, Ha'argazim, Kfar Shalem, and Yad Eliyahu – to document the area’s intangible heritage. Through conversations with residents, archival research, and photographic documentation, a rare perspective has emerged: the vanished places continue to influence not due to their physical existence, but because of the memories they left behind.

Demolished buildings, defunct community institutions, and sites remembered only in memory are depicted in the exhibition as the spaces' "phantom pain." Though they may no longer physically exist, their absent presence continues to linger.

The exhibition features video works about seven "phantoms" – locations that highlight the tension between preservation, change, and forgetting.

Curatorial accompaniment – Shira Levy Benyemini

Production – Michal Fania Lichtenstein