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© foto: essl museum

Behieve Archive

I was born and still live in a low-income neighborhood in Southern Tel Aviv. My personal background and personal struggles were the foundation that led me towards work in social activism in the public arena. I have devoted my work to social justice initiatives; advancement of women’s employment and earning opportunities; solidarity among women and dialogue between Jewish and Arab women. My activism combines a social and cultural agenda regarding women and art, diversity, dialogue respecting the differences as well as multiculturalism. As a Mizrahi feminist, visual artist, curator and social activist, I have been leading for many years an innovative agenda in the politics of gender and identities in Israel.

Together with a group of women activists, one of my main priorities in the last few years was the establishment of the first Mizrahi (Middle Eastern/North African/Asian Jews) feminist movement, based on the principle of Feminism of Colour, with an agenda focused on economic, social, political and cultural rights for marginalized women from different ethnic backgrounds such as: Mizrahi, Palestinian, Ethiopian, Bedouin women as well as foreign immigrants and political refugees, entitled Achoti (Sister) – for Women in Israel. I became the Executive Director of Achoti and developed a few cultural centres that interconnect the passion for social, political and cultural activism.

My activist work is very much intertwined with my artistic work and has been the source of creative inspiration. The core of my artwork is my connection with people and their struggles for justice. For many years I have initiated cultural, social and communal projects that feature community involvement and that involve ethnic themes. I use recurring themes in my creative work, such as exploring the concept of Identity, and the notion of archives – a way to preserve history. My art becomes a tool of archiving, in order to document the unrecorded history of the Mizrahi community and other non-hegemonic communities in Israel, which mostly represent the working class. These communities all struggle to free themselves from discrimination and to achieve social and cultural recognition.

As an Artist, I am engaged in various mediums, such as photography, sculpture, painting, installations, writing, etc. Art has become a medium to voice my personal and social beliefs.

At this exhibition, I exhibit two artworks. One of them is a Beehive/Archive installation I created specially for this exhibition. The motif of the Archive appears in my artworks over past years, and it is connected to my personal biography as a Mizrahi woman. The history of minorities, which was a verbal history passed from mother to daughter, is not usually written down by the Establishment in Israel. Within my installation, I use the image of the archive to document the history of these minorities as it is occurring and to represent a story of the Mizrahi women’s community within Israel. The Archive accumulates textual and visual information and knowledge of various elements of Mizrahi Feminism and which the work Achoti (Sister) – for Women in Israel movement is involved in. The work also relates to the Beehive motif as the Beehive symbolizes women’s labour, solidarity, products etc. The Beehive/Archive is arranged within various compartments, each compartment in the shape of a hexagon. Within these compartments, I store elements regarding Mizrahi history and narrative, such as books, diaries, poetry, photographs, baskets woven by Israeli women of Ethiopian origin, drawings, embroidered handbags and cushions made by Palestinian women, and more. All of them to be sold at the exhibition as fair trade elements.

In that work I connect the concept of Archive together with the concept of the Beehive and the Bazaar, since the Mizrahi Feminist activism is a spatial work that embraces actions together with texts and theory.

The second installation “There are no Names for Things” is a table that has on top of it eighty-four cubes, like a Chessboard. Each cube is covered with photographs, wax, texts and other elements. These documentary photographs I took in a period of six months during 1997 among disadvantaged communities in the geographical peripheries across Israel. This art work talks about the oppression, the erasing of identity and the history of the Mizrahi community in Israel. And at the same time it creates a journey, a visual story of place, people and cultures.

Shula Keshet