“Your Dreams are Drowning in the Sea, and still You Speak in Poetry”*

Inkjet print, video loop, 5:30 min, 2025

Using old slides of my grandparents, and nostalgic Israeli music we used to listen to at their house, I reflect on the collapse of a collective homeland dream, as well as the collapse of my own personal dreams.

The archival images serve as backdrops for an improvised studio space, defining both an  emotional and spatial territory across different corners of my family house. These fragmented settings form a potential stage for me.

I invite the viewers to get a glimpse into the “backstage”, by exposing my work mechanism with rough edits and visible photographic props that appear in the frame. These gestures do not attempt to recreate the past, but rather acknowledge the inevitable failure of trying to do so. 

The failure itself is part of the story, it embodies the complexity of the Israeli dream and in some ways, it mirrors my own personal sense of loss — once a dancer, now struggling to move due to chronic pain. I navigate between memories of the body I once had and the uncertain future of the one I now inhabit. Through self-portraiture and performance, I seek to revive my lost dreams and find a new stage.

The search for potential performance spaces that are characterized by a sense of anachronism, led me to document these sites and ultimately revive them through a dance routine. The eclectic choreography draws from Israeli musical variety shows, memorial ceremonies I once performed in, family video archives, and more.

As much as this work longs for the past, it also aches for the present, and fears the future. The ongoing shift between innocence and disillusionment underscores the tension between past and present. And still I keep insisting to hold on to the remnants of my naivety, a fleeting comfort in these uncertain times.

*Leah Goldberg, Fragments of Life, 1971