Bibliologia: The Book as Body

Participating artists:

Avital Geva, Eve K. Tremblay, Wanja-Jonathan Schaub, Jean-Baptiste Warluzel, Yosef-Joseph-Yaakov Dadoune, Christo (Christo Vladimirov Javachef), Maya Zack and Stuben21 (Peter Daniel and Nicole Horn), Micha Ullman, Noga Inbar, Raphael Sigal

Bibliologia: The Book as Body, on view at Petach Tikva Museum of Art from November 26, 2015 to March 19, 2016, explores the connections, associations and interactions between the book and the human body. The exhibition brings together the methodologies of art, ethnography, art history and material culture in order to stress the corporeal nature of the book. It explores the ways in which we relate to books not as objects, but rather as subjects. Indeed, books produce effects on us: they enrich our world, affect our perceptions, stimulate our sensations, and trigger our emotions. Unlike other objects that are purely functional, engaging with a book initiates an active and complex relation.

Bibliologia: The Book as Body features books borrowed from the Israel National Library once owned by Walter Benjamin, one-of-a-kind Jewish cultic objects from a private collection, photographs from Yad Vashem’s archive, hi-tech digital reproductions of Cairo’s genizah fragments, an index from Petach Tikva’s archive, and modern artworks from the Israel Museum collection shown side-by-side with sculptures, photographs, films, and works by contemporary artists, some of which were specifically commissioned for the exhibition.

Despite their difference of status on the dialectic scale that extends from use value to exhibition value, the works presented are placed on equal footing. By detracting from any form of hierarchy, Bibliologia: The Book as Body questions the boundaries that separate a book from a work of art, a library from a museum, a site of exhibition from a site of remembrance. It challenges the position of the reader, the artist, the archivist, the thinker, the writer, the designer, and the curator alike. The exhibition is conceived as a variegated multimedia experience and fosters a dynamic encounter between the spectator and the pieces presented.

Alongside:

Documentation of a performance by the Marie Chouinard Dance Company, Judaica items, and treasures from the National Library of Israel and other archives