Once a Tree in the Forest - Beita

Once a Tree in the Forest Curator: Avital Wexler

Artists: Ophra Eyal and Itamar Paloge (Faluja)
5.8-12.10.2021

The book “Where the Wild Things Are,” written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, recounts the story of the boy Max who dresses as a wolf one night and starts wreaking havoc around the house. As punishment, his mom sends him to bed without supper.
That night, a forest suddenly started growing in Max’s room.
The exhibition lingers in the moment the forest starts growing in the gallery. Furniture sprout branches and limbs, the trees begin to hiss and reveal a host of imaginary and mythological creatures from different cultures in forgotten or familiar legends. Ophra Eyal and Itamar Paloge (Faluja) awaken the memories that reside in the tree and wish to come out of the thick, wild, ancient darkness into the light and normality of everyday life.
This is an invitation to wander the twilight zone between childlike innocence and realistic disillusionment, between the growing branch and the severed trunk, between the gentle and the raw and animalistic in another pulsating encounter between nature and culture.