New art exhibit reexamines accepted biblical, societal wisdom

BARRY DAVIS, The Jerusalem Post , April 28, 2024
The eagle-eyed will have noted the similarity between the braces of words on either side of the dash in the title of Nelly Agassi’s offering. Should, somehow, that not immediately catch the eye, you can’t avoid the only slightly subliminal message in situ, as the first three letters of the first word blink on and off. In fact, the neon work is the result of a collaboration between Agassi and her son, Emmanuel Evron-Agassi.
 
“Nelly took the lettering for this from her son’s handwriting, when he was just learning to read and write,” explains museum deputy director Shahar Shalev. “There is something innocent about the way it looks.” That, indeed, befits a scribe of such tender years, but the source of the lettering stands in stark contrast to the plaintive gist of the fluctuating textual content.
 
THE MINIMALIST sign is, in fact, a scaled down version of the original work which was created for O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Agassi and her family relocated to the Windy City 13 years ago, and the beacon, as the museum notes: “illuminates personal and collective experiences of distance, longing, and the ambivalence of being neither here nor there, while succinctly expressing the expectation and relief of coming home.”
 
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