Ariel Hacohen: By the Rivers

At the gallery entrance, a screen displays simultaneous Hebrew and Arabic translations of the chorus. The music heard in the background infuses the words with pathos, before the subtitles disintegrate into particles. In the adjacent gallery, a large projection duplicates Hacohen’s own figure into a unified group, singing the chorus in Italian, as they mourn and long for home, for Zion.

Set against a cycle of sunset and sunrise, Hacohen constructs a theatrical non-place, layered with multiple contexts and associations. Like an archeologist, he reveals and joins varied layers in the history of this place – from Saturday of October 7th at 06:29 and scenes from the ensuing war – the captured hostages and burned kibbutzim, the destruction of life in the Gaza strip – through the establishment of the State of Israel and the “right of return,” back to the destruction of the First Temple and exile. Within these, Hacohen seeks to broaden perspectives, linking references from art history and other experiences of uprooting and displacement that transcend national and cultural borders.

The chronicle of the land is also interwoven with the political shifts that occurred in 19th-century Italy around the time of Verdi's opera, when Italy was divided into ruled principalities, and the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” became an allegory for national unity and freedom. A century later, it was appropriated by Mussolini’s Fascist party, revealing itself as a living multifaceted text – simultaneously carrying voices and meanings of both freedom and authoritarian oppression. In its ambiguity, the chorus holds the many transformations that memory and history have undergone on this land, where all people seek to reclaim their lost homeland.

Amid the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, Hacohen's chorus evokes the continuing displacement and loss. The figures are dressed in makeshift pajamas and printed t-shirts bearing various symbols – KKL, Bnei Zion Yeshiva, the Statue of Liberty, Adidas, and others – some barefoot, others in slippers, all appear haunted. With faces powdered to a sickly pallor, Hacohen expresses the search for an individual voice as it inevitably sinks into the collective suffering. The choir singing in unison becomes a tribune of mourning and prayer, resonating against the grim duality of this place: two cultures, two histories, two collective consciousnesses, each singing its longing – their voices mingling in sorrow and yearning for return.