The Apartment Hosts: What Was and What Will Be | Tsibi Geva
Exhibition Opening: 15.10.2024, Tuesday, 20:00
Closing Event: 2.11.2024, Saturday, 19:30
For five weeks, Tsibi Geva will be hosted in the residency apartment of the Liebling Haus, presenting a process-oriented, cumulative exhibition. In a gradual approach, he will place his artworks and collected objects within the apartment spaces, exploring the relationships between them and the modernist building that serves as a symbol of the Zionist construction enterprise.
In this endeavor, set against the backdrop of ongoing war and internal social conflict over the country's identity, Geva seeks to explore how these events permeate the subconscious and manifest in everyday behaviors within the built environment—both private and public.
In contrast to his father, Yaakov (Kuba) Geva, who was a committed modernist architect who fought for precision and vision, Tsibi Geva examines everything that has been added to buildings by their inhabitants: shutters, grilles, enclosed balconies, replaced windows, trellises, tarps, and all the signs and traces of life spilling into the built environment. To him, these "irregularities" can be seen as symbols of resistance—a resistance against the idea of artificial uniformity and an imagined melting pot.
His work within the space reveals Geva's inner world, creative process, and sense of urgency and anxiety as part of an existential state under threat.
The Second Part of the Exhibition
In the second part, displayed in the Project Room on the ground floor, Geva presents a reconstruction of his proposal for the 2003 Venice Biennale, a proposal that was not accepted. The two spaces together form a cohesive narrative that seeks to examine—through their relationship to architecture and the mechanisms of destruction and construction—the tension between the Jewish-Zionist ethos and a utopian vision that is now gradually disintegrating. He delves into our identity and belonging to this place, questioning what our future vision for it might be.
Tsibi Geva, one of Israel's leading artists, focuses in his work on the Israeli-Palestinian existence, local identity, and the cultural, political, and personal meanings of symbols and fundamental concepts within society—such as conflict, wars, and daily life. Born in 1951 on Kibbutz Ein Shemer, he currently lives and works in Tel Aviv and New York. Since 1979, Geva has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major institutions in Israel and around the world, including the Israeli Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). His works are part of significant public and private collections, and he has received multiple awards and grants, including the Sandberg Prize from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Mendel and Eva Pundik Foundation Award from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israeli Ministry of Culture. Geva is a professor at the School of Visual Arts, MFA program, New York; the University of Haifa; and the Art School at the Midrasha, Beit Berl College.
Curator: Architect Sabrina Cegla
Assistant Curators: Michal Lichtenstein, Noa Helen Amari
Assistants to Tsibi Geva: Talia Shalit, Avital Inbar
Installation: Carmel Ben-Or, Liav Levi
Video Photography: Daniel Lieberman
Editing: Tsipora Kampinsky
Translation: Sivan Reva
Graphic Design: Ran Malul
Model: Michal David
Exhibition Photography: Lena Gomon
