Nevet Yitzhak’s video installation Gallery of Jewish Types (2018) presents an intricate exploration of cultural memory, identity, and the politics of visual representation. The work features sculptural “totems” made of Hanukkah lamps, smoking candles, and shiny metal objects, swaying around ivory reliefs of Jewish types—Ashkenazi, Kurdish, Yemenite, and others—created at the Kame’a workshop of Jerusalem’s Bezalel School. These portraits, originally crafted in the early 20th century, reflect a racial worldview and the era’s fascination with categorizing Jewish communities based on their distinct physical characteristics and attire.
Yitzhak’s installation dismantles and reconfigures these historical objects and images, offering a critique of their construction and the ideological forces behind them. By blending these reliefs with Bezalel objects—created between 1906 and 1929 and imbued with Zionist themes—the artist introduces “hybrids” of human and inanimate, challenging viewers to reconsider how memory, knowledge, and national identity are shaped through visual culture. The result is a delicate, precariously balanced monument to Bezalel’s visual legacy, questioning the fragility of contemporary narratives of memory and collective identity.
