Cypresses, Sabra cacti, donkeys and camels- characteristics of Mideastern scenery- are symbols that Avi Yair has been using for over thirty years, to describe his longing for 1948 – Zionism’s golden age. A time and place that drew a liberal world-view, belief in human ethics and the vision of creating a moral society. Yair felt that we have gone astray, lacking defined borders delimiting territory and behavior. In a cluster of work from the last two years, Yair reconstructs lost borders by drawing renewed outlines in a variety of techniques.

Cypresses and Sabre cacti serve the population: the Jewish-Arab as natural border markers fencing off settlements, pastures, plowed fields and cemeteries –borders of the living and the dead similarly marked. Yair uses this similarity to blur the difference between the peoples as well as to establish a vital sustainable border between them: burning tiny olive-tree donkeys planting cypresses and sabre bushes on their backs. Their caravan as a herd in one installation, or as individuals in another represents nations sharing the same suffering destinies. In another work, he casts bronze cypresses into a fragile row, and in many engravings cypresses fall from the sky onto a map of Israel.

Yair uses fifties maps of Israel, where the borders of a promising young state are marked, as substrat, in engravings, and as subject. In a work named “the green line” which is a vitrine in which Israel’s map lies on its side, its historical borders marked in glowing green, a caravan of sabra carrying donkeys passing along it as green neon light glows the scene. The green light symbolizing the historic borderline rhymes brilliantly with the burning mosque minarets at night.

The layered mosaic of images is intensified by a charged soundtrack as musical boxes installed by Yair play lyrics-less the tunes of 1948’s mythological songs: Believe, the day will come; Bab-El-Wad; and From-The-Summit-Of-Mount-Scopus. The absent words forcing the spectator to recite them in his/her heart.

From-The-Summit-Of-Mount-Scopus, written by Avigdor Hameiri in 1928 and composed by Stanisław Moniuszko glorifies Jerusalem, pleading “Light up your face to your son” and pledging: “From your ruins will I build you” – the conditions for loving ones homeland.
Bab-El-Wad – Haim Guri’s poem composed by Shmuel Freshko in 1948 just as the battle for Jerusalem ended, is a testament of the fallen and a commitment by the surviving that the war inferno is for a peaceful future, as anemones will bloom in the mountain and slopes. Here too the promise that the battle that turned the fallen and the living into one family was not in vein.

Believe-The-Day-Will-Come, with lyrics by Raphael Klachkin and melody by Menashe Baharav during the war of independence, which constitutes this exhibition’s name, contains that same hope for the days that will come after the cessation of battles:
And then I’ll know – the battle has a purpose, Even though the price is very dear, So that a day will come sometime
We’ll be able to breathe here and live!
Believe, The Day Will Come!
Avi Yair is disappointed, yet still believes.

Closing: 30.04.17