Makom-Al-Makom_catalog-new

E12 Shifting Sands: Ronen Sharabani and Micha Ullman – an Intergenerational Encounter | Hava Aldouby Sand is matter that cannot be contained within fixed boundaries. It drifts across and beyond borders, and thwarts the promise of firm ground. This exhibition highlights the resonance of Ullman's precariously-balanced earth sculptures and perforated sand tables in Sharabani's projections on sand, and in his digitally manipulated views from Google Earth, which hone in on geographical sites that reverberate with histories of displacement and re-emplacement. The resonances between these two bodies of work, which together span over five decades, highlight an intergenerational encounter taking place on shifting sands, as it were. Through the trope of precariously balanced bodies of earth (in Sharabani's case, suggestively hardened through digital manipulation) installations by Ullman and Sharabani endow the cross- generational migratory history of Israeli society with a compelling spatial presence. Micha Ullman was born in Tel Aviv in 1939 to parents who had fled Nazi Germany in the early 1930s. Based in Israel, Ullman has built a successful international career since the 1970s, exhibiting and teaching worldwide. 1 Sharabani was also born in Tel Aviv, about a generation later. By then, Tel Aviv had become a major city and the capital of Israel's business and culture. Sharabani's grandparents immigrated from Iraq in 1951, 2 along with the majority of Iraq's Jewish population: close to 130,000 out of 135,000 Iraqi Jews left their homes in the space of six months. Fleeing anti-Zionist (which soon tipped into antisemitic) harassment, they were compelled to give up their citizenship and abandon their property by a specially legislated law. 3 In 1999, Sharabani, like many young Israeli artists, left Israel to study in New York, where his career as a visual artist began. In 2007 he returned to Tel Aviv, where he bases his international artistic career. In a curious coincidence, Sharabani's rented studio space once belonged to a German-Jewish immigrant of the same generation and social stratum as Micha Ullman's parents. In concluding this essay I revisit this space, which is rich with historical resonances. 1 Zalmona, Yigal. 2011. Sands of Time: The Work of Micha Ullman (Hebrew). Jerusalem: The Israel Museum. 2 Sharabani's biographical information, and his references to his work quoted in this paper, are based on the author's personal communications with the artist (Tel Aviv, 2019). 3 Bashkin, Orit. 2012. New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq . Stanford: Stanford University Press.