29.09.2024 – 24.08.2025
The history of Arab-Jewish life goes back centuries, to the pre-Islamic tribal societies of Arabia. A long and contradictory history of relations – sometimes romanticised, sometimes forgotten, repressed and demonised. With the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and the expulsion of the Palestinian population, the conflicts surrounding the decolonisation and independence of Arab states, Israel’s wars with its Arab neighbours and the sometimes forcibly forced mass emigration of the Jewish population from Arab countries, the Jewish-Muslim relationship is now seen by many as nothing more than a contradiction. In Israel, Jews from the Arab world were themselves discriminated against as ‘Mizrahim’ for a long time. This, in turn, was the impetus for some of them to re-evaluate Arab-Jewish history as an alternative to the irreconcilable national ‘identities’. Why is it so difficult to think about both attributions – Arab and Jewish – together, despite the rich and multi-layered history of Arab-Jewish lifeworlds? Can they still intertwine in today’s world as components of a complex cultural imprint? The exhibition traces these considerations in two ways: On the one hand, seven Jewish artists with Arab roots look at the question of Jewish identities in countries characterised by Islam.
Participating artists
Dor Zlekha Levy, Dana Flora Levy, Mona Yahia, Joseph Sassoon Semah, Hori Izhaki, Tamir Zadok, Eliyahu Fatal
Yalla. Arab-Jewish contacts
29.09.2024 – 24.08.2025
Jüdisches Museum Hohenems
Villa Heimann-Rosenthal
Schweizer Str. 5, 6845 Hohenems
www.jm-hohenems.at
