{"id":28198,"date":"2026-01-06T10:52:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T08:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cda.org.il\/?post_type=mt_event&#038;p=28198"},"modified":"2026-01-06T10:52:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T08:52:30","slug":"forbidden-junctions","status":"publish","type":"mt_event","link":"https:\/\/cda.org.il\/en\/events\/forbidden-junctions\/","title":{"rendered":"Forbidden Junctions"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":28199,"template":"","event_cat":[152],"acf":{"event_type":"exhibition","subtitle":"","logo":null,"event_custom_toptix_link":"","duration":"14\/02\/2009 - 09\/05\/2009","video":"","start_date":null,"price":"","location":"","ages":"","people":"","hosts":"","dates_text":"","single_page_text":"","bottom_text":"If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, \u2019Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.\u2019\r\n\r\n- Romans 11: 17-19\r\n\r\nThe exhibition \u201dForbidden Junctions\u201d introduces a multi-directional thought process pointing at fluid, stratified cultural realities which challenge deep-seated identity labels anchored in collective cultural memory. The show features artists from several \u201dMiddle Easteran\u201d countries (Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran) whose works address issues pertinent to the political, cultural, and dynamic reality in which they live. All the featured works, some created especially for the exhibition, present intercultural junctions where various groups adopt certain symbols, while relinquishing others. The term \u201dforbidden junctions\u201d (or prohibited hybrids), originating in the Mishna, refers to the five negative precepts included in the Pentateuch: the prohibitions regarding the mixing of species or commingling of different kinds1 (kil\u2019ayim2). In the context of the exhibition, the term has been borrowed to indicate questions arising from cultural syntheses, acknowledging that culture is never static and never evolves along a single, set route, thus incongruent with the modernist practice of classifying and categorizing.\r\n\r\nIn the context of the identity discourse\u2014and without elaborating on the argument that culture and history are rationally structured to serve political interests\u2014cultural conditionings become an inevitable object of study as an organized, directed project. Each of the works in the exhibition opts for a single identity label over others, spotlights a certain cultural aspect, and represents a specific point in time, which evades the cultural space defined by the Orientalist project, while acknowledging its own ocular limitations. The artists often visually incorporate the historical experience of their people in their works,3 hence their reading underscores the intricate nature of collective-cultural memory, bringing to the fore the dynamic relations between image-language-history.\r\n\r\nIn different places throughout the world, and certainly in the case of the Middle East, the categories classifying identities and cultures as discrete, autonomous chapters are being dissolved and challenged, for not only does the opposition between \u201dEast\u201d and \u201dWest,\u201d \u201dOrient\u201d and \u201dOccident,\u201d become blurred, but a multi-faceted, hybrid cultural reality is enhanced.4 This constant transformation can reinforce the essence and nature of a given culture, rather than interfere with its \u201dauthenticity.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe exhibition \u201dForbidden Junctions\u201d does not adhere to the discourse condemning every Western influence whatsoever on Eastern cultures; instead, it wishes to delve into the cultural wealth generated by a \u201dforbidden\u201d inter-cultural and multi-cultural encounter. This is not to refute the argument that artistic, architectural, and other expressions of Eastern culture have often remained a part of a paradigm of sign appropriation, ostensibly intended to present the \u201dEast\u201d as equal, while in fact doubly disregarding it.5 In this context it ought to be stressed that, rather than marketing uniformity (the \u201dprohibitory\u201d dimension), colonialism and imperialism introduced hybridity as an option and not only a prohibition; as a possibility which was present long before the advent of postmodernism.\r\nIn the absence of a better term, the definition of the region in which the participating artists operate as the \u201dMiddle East\u201d embeds a Western terminological demagogy. The definition of the \u201dEast\u201d as \u201dNear,\u201d \u201dMiddle,\u201d or \u201dFar\u201d is always made in geographical relation to the \u201dWest\u201d as the center.6 The \u201dEast\u201d\u2014that relative horizon ostensibly moving in relation to Central Europe\u2014has been subordinated, as part of the limitation of language, to a Eurocentric perception. Thus, literature pertaining to the \u201dEast\u201d has faced many philological and methodological challenges. Despite the prevalence of binary notions, such as \u201dEast,\u201d \u201dOrient,\u201d \u201dOrientalism,\u201d \u201dOriental studies,\u201d etc., their very use should be questioned.\r\n\r\nThe last decade has seen a considerable number of studies about art from the \u201dMiddle East\u201d by European and American scholars, historians, and curators, attesting to a growing \u201dWestern\u201d interest in the region\u2019s aesthetics and cultures.7 Vis-\u00e0-vis these trends, the exhibition \u201dForbidden Junctions\u201d sets out to deconstruct the binary perceptions regarding \u201dEast\u201d\/\u201dWest\u201d relations. Its staging at an art center supported by a municipal body which operates as an integral part of Israel\u2019s quasi-Western art world, was accompanied by many internal conflicts. The physical space in which the exhibition is presented places all the participating works in this context. In view of European colonialism and Jewish nationalism, the presentation of an exhibition addressing the identity of \u201dEastern\u201d cultures in Israel\u2019s territorial space introduces the issue of intercultural relations between dominant groups\u2014whether in terms of number, or in military or economic terms\u2014and minority groups, necessitating a tour along the changing, imaginary borders of the regional historical conceptualization, both the local-Zionist and the Palestinian. The State of Israel, which, under a modernist narrative, possesses a Western national identity and adheres to Western terminology within a region called the \u201dMiddle East,\u201d raises intricate questions by its very existence; all the more so, since the majority of its inhabitants are not of European origin, but rather Arab-Jews and Palestinians. As opposed to the claim of the Zionist narrative, Israel did not really emerge \u201dex nihilo.\u201d\r\n\r\nHere I must add a personal note: As an Arab-Jewish artist and curator whose language of expression is that of contemporary Western art and theory, the Western exhibition space functions, to my mind, as a necessary platform for exploring the duality dichotomizing \u201dEast\u201d and \u201dWest,\u201d \u201dJew\u201d and \u201dArab,\u201d \u201dAshkenazi\u201d and \u201dMizrahi.\u201d This realm of confrontation seems to introduce the ability to examine representations of cultural hybridization in a concentrated, acute manner. Thus the show, which critically addresses the exotification and folklorization of the East (and, in some respects, of the West as well), challenges the Western exhibition space, using it as a sounding board which takes part in the struggle for visual representation as a political struggle. The modernist \u201daesthetic\u201d experience indeed often elicits alienation between the viewer and that which is presented to him. Still, one must also acknowledge the advantages of the \u201dwhite space\u201d whose contents tend to strike the viewer with awe upon entering.\r\n\r\nWhile the postmodern era let the voice of the \u201dother\u201d (the \u201dblack,\u201d \u201dMizrahi,\u201d \u201dgay\/lesbian,\u201d etc.) be heard, it also reinforced the dichotomy between the \u201denlightened\u201d \u201dwhite Westerner\u201d and all those \u201dothers,\u201d revalidating the colonialist modes of observation, naturally occurring in the language of art as well. Much has been written about the \u201dmysterious\u201d Orient and its treatment by the West, wishing to pattern it and forcing an \u201dinferior,\u201d \u201dblack\u201d identity upon it; the post-colonialist discourse has become prevalent, almost hackneyed, in the academic and contemporary art world. Edward Said applied the term \u201dOrientalism\u201d\u2014a critical notion which has become deeply established in the past three decades\u2014to the relationship between the \u201dOccident\u201d and the \u201dOrient.\u201d According to Said, standardization and cultural stereotyping of the \u201dOrient\u201d have intensified the hold of its demonology to Western eyes.8 Indeed, while various cultures in the West identified diverse perceptions under the canopy called \u201dWest,\u201d they continued to regard the \u201dOrient\u201d as a uniform, static place. The deconstruction of the colonialist gaze must not be deemed an attempt to deny the existence of shared cultural elements founded on a long history common to cultures from the part of the globe thoughtlessly called \u201dEast,\u201d and ones shared by cultures located in the \u201dWest.\u201d Recognizing the danger inherent in reinforcing those divisive modernist practices which perpetuate hierarchical oppositions between \u201dEast\u201d and \u201dWest,\u201d on the one hand, and existing stereotypes, on the other\u2014calls for great caution.\r\n\r\nThe cultural and artistic appeals arising from the realities mirrored by the works in \u201dForbidden Junctions\u201d are dual and swathed in contradiction: the \u201dWestern\u201d and \u201dEastern\u201d spaces often become coherent spaces, where the invention of the \u201dEast\u201d and the invention of the \u201dWest\u201d form a part of a comprehensive iconographic array. As part of the exhibition, the Western \u201dsuper-culture\u201d likewise becomes an object of investigation, and the local is often deemed as hegemonic as the \u201dmodernist.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\r\n\r\nScandar Copti\u2019s video installation CFJ1 (College des Fr\u00e8res, Jaffa) presents four Christian Arab men who grew up in Jaffa, the artist included. Their common feature is the fact that as children they attended the French Christian School. The building was erected in 1882 to disseminate French culture in the region, and continued operation in situ, insisting on a European curriculum and schooling system, despite the dramatic changes undergone by the community which it serves: the 1948 war, the deportation of part of the Palestinian inhabitants, the entry of a new Jewish population, introduction of the Israeli educational system, and the dwindling of the Christian population within Palestinian society in Israel. Through the conversation of these four men, Copti unfolds the school\u2019s story as an island of stability, on the one hand, and as a dull mirror reflecting the transformations endured by Jaffa and the Christian-Arab community, on the other.\r\n\r\nSimilarly, Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour\u2019s video piece The Mondial in Me\u2019eliya addresses the place of the Arab-Christian minority in Israel. It shows how the Christian minority forms its cultural identity by documenting the inhabitants of the village of Me\u2019eliya in northern Israel during the World Cup. The Roman Catholic inhabitants of the village identify mainly with football teams from the \u201dWestern\u201d world, accordingly hanging the flags of their respective nationalities and painting their faces and houses in matching colors. The flags of Middle Eastern, North African, and East Asian countries are conspicuously absent. The uniqueness of the Christian-Arab community in Israel as a Christian minority within an Arab minority, challenges the sustainability of the nation-state as a cultural phenomenon, introducing the volatile affinity between culture and nationality. Through a socio-graphic prism, many minority groups try to find their place within the national \u201dcollective memory.\u201d This is particularly evident in Israel, where classifying thought processes and enforcement of non-hybrid orders are the norm.\r\n\r\nThe Christians in Israel confront two \u201dmajority\u201d groups with which they \u201dnegotiate\u201d their identity: Israeli Jews and Muslim Arabs. Their historical and geographic national definition as Arabs ascribes the members of this community to the Muslim-Arab world in general, and specifically to the Muslim Palestinians and the Muslim Arabs in Israel. Characterization and definition of the contexts in which cultural and social customs of majority groups are assimilated by minority groups, is a complex task, especially in the case of minorities which negotiate with two majority groups.9 In order to guard their uniqueness and protect their identity, the Christians in Israel display a dual attitude toward both majority groups to which they belong: on the one hand, they attest to their will to integrate, especially in the Israeli Jewish majority; on the other hand, they display a clear tendency to maintain their ingroup identity and set themselves apart, mainly from the Muslim-Arab majority. Only a small percentage of these Christians consider assimilation into one of the groups as a possible alternative, and this option with regard to either larger group is considered equally negative. Both Jewish society and Muslim society fail to understand the versatility of the Christian minority, as well as its religious, social, and cultural needs as a differentiated ethnic group. Nevertheless, the Christians display an equally pluralistic view toward either group, the \u201dWestern\u201d like the \u201dEastern,\u201d tending to accept both. From the position of a \u201dminority within a minority,\u201d perhaps the Christian Arabs in Israel have no other option but to accept the different majority positions with extra tolerance, and to form their identity vis-\u00e0-vis these groups.\r\n\r\nTurkish artist K\u00f6ken Ergun\u2019s video installation, Wedding, explores cultural memory. For eight months the artist photographed more than forty wedding ceremonies of Turkish immigrants in Berlin, documentary footage which he edited repeatedly. The work presents the documentary information as a cultural mirror reflecting the displacement of cultural customs. Frame by frame, from the visit to the bridal salon, the artist creates a fictive documentation of a \u201dtypically Turkish\u201d wedding, as it were. In this way, not only does he deconstruct and decode the cultural characteristics of the Turkish community, but he also reconstructs the way in which identity is manifested through changing ritualistic codes. Ergun avoids the ethnographic (colonialist) obstacle which results from romanticizing the \u201dobject of research,\u201d thus creating, with calculated craftiness, an imaginary narrative elusive to foreign eyes, introducing collective cultural memory to be reconsidered.\r\n\r\nIn her video installation Perfectly Suited for You, Iranian artist Solmaz Shahbazi addresses cultural stereotypes and the construction of a new identity by the emerging upper-middle class in the city of Istanbul. Turkey\u2019s nouveau riche have in recent years moved to houses in prestigious, self-enclosed neighborhoods (\u201dgated communities\u201d) in the city\u2019s affluent suburbs. The idea of a gated community originated in California, and has been gathering momentum in the Middle East. Both the architects and the inhabitants of these new neighborhoods fantasize about a \u201dnew order\u201d and a quiet, comfortable life detached from the city and the local population. As part of the artificial structure of these enclosed communities, inhabitants \u201denjoy\u201d a sterile, ostensibly protected life style. The work examines how the new homeowners exert themselves to acquire a new identity, both as a group and as a class, setting themselves apart from the local population to which they belonged prior to their acquisition of wealth. The installation consists of a television screen presenting a videostill taken in a gated compound, reminiscent of a Hollywood set. One of the compound dwellers is heard in the background, explaining her choice of such a neighborhood to maintain a \u201dsafe distance\u201d from the city inhabitants. She reiterates the ease and practicality of such a life, the fact that one doesn\u2019t have to leave the complex, where the global-cosmopolitan modern image is underscored in contradistinction to the local image. Residence in a gated community becomes a status symbol, and the property buyers also acquire a new status for themselves. Screened next to the television is a video piece reviewing different compounds of \u201dgated communities\u201d throughout Istanbul. The architectural division, whereby the newly affluent gather in \u201dsafe\u201d spaces, is presented as a solution to the city\u2019s \u201dsecurity problem.\u201d\r\n\r\nFuture Architecture is a project by the London\/Bethlehem Architectural Studio directed by Palestinian Sandi Hilal, Italian Alessandro Petti, and Israeli Eyal Weizman. The current exhibition presents a stereoscopic video documentation made as part of the project, Future Architecture: Psagot\/ElBireh, where architects Armin Linke, Francesco Mattuzzi, and Renato Rinaldi propose a new use for evacuated Israeli settlements and military bases in the Palestinian Authority\u2019s territory. The project uses the language of architecture to articulate the spatial dimension of a process of decolonization (colony\/settlement \u201dliberation\u201d). Two disparate video works refer to two different sites: the Jewish settlement Psagot established in July 1981 as part of the \u201dcompensations\u201d for the evacuees of Yamit in the Sinai, and the military base Oush Grab adjacent to Beit Sahour, evacuated by the IDF in May 2006. The settlement Psagot was selected as the first \u201dlaboratory\u201d for architectural conversion. With a populace of 1,700, consisting mainly of American Jews, it was selected due to its strategic spatial location, on a hilltop towering to 900 meters, overlooking the entire area. Prior to its occupation by Israel in 1967, the hill was intended as a tourist resort. The architects acknowledge the fact that the settlements are one of the sorest spots of Israeli domination, yet their proposal is not intended to find solutions for the demands of either side. Therefore they avoid the terminology often used in the political discourse in order to find a \u201dsolution\u201d for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The use of the term \u201ddeconolonization\u201d does not imply the forced transfer of inhabitants and communities, but rather offers consensual physical intervention which is intended to open new horizons for change, as part of which Palestinian and Jewish citizens will be able to integrate. The second video piece refers, as aforesaid, to a project already performed in situ. The former military base was erected in the northern entrance to the Palestinian city Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, in the Mandatory period. Between 1948 and 1967 it functioned as a Jordanian army base, and from 1967 to 2006\u2014as an IDF base. Its evacuation by Israeli soldiers was swift, carried out in the middle of the night, and by morning, the Palestinians entered and emptied it of the remaining equipment. As part of the evacuation agreement with the Palestinian Authority it was agreed that the place would not become a police station, but would be transferred to the hands of the Beit Sahour Municipality to serve as a public space. Thus, the new outline plan for the base environment includes a future residential neighborhood, a hospital, and a public park at the foot of the mountain. A playground has already been built on site, as well as a restaurant and an open air reception area, exemplifying the functional conversion of the compound and its adaptation to the needs of the local Palestinian community.\r\n\r\nIraqi artist Waffa Bilal presents The Ashes Series, a cycle of photographs featuring miniatures model of his own construction which trace photographs uploaded online, documenting the ruins in Baghdad in the wake of the war in Iraq. At the heart of Bilal\u2019s photographs, amidst the ruins of Saddam Hussein\u2019s house, stands a chair the likes of which may be found in European palaces. 21 grams of human ashes mixed with organic ashes were scattered on the model. The photographs, documenting the construction of the recreated model, explore the impact of the destruction on domestic spaces expropriated from the private domain following their exposure by the media, pointing at the violent act that took place in them. Bilal examines the alienation generated by the language of art in general, and the language of photography in particular, indicating the indifference of those viewers to the horrifying photographs due to their vast quantity. The act of reconstruction brings the viewer closer to the intimacy of these rooms, while exposing the horror that has taken place in them. The spaces form a symbolic reminder of the repression involved in political conflicts and cultural dichotomies, such as George Bush\u2019s speech which divided the world into those who belonged to the \u201daxis of evil\u201d and those who did not. According to Bilal, an Iraqi refugee living in the United States, the photographs represent his attempt to find logic in a destruction resulting from cultural clashes, and to preserve the beauty inherent in the moment after the storm, once the violent act has ended and the ashes settle.\r\n\r\nPalestinian artist Reem Da\u2019as\u2019s work, A Brief Time in Iraq, consists of the scanning of an album of photographs taken by two adventurous tourists who drove their car from East Jerusalem to Iraq on the eve of the US-British invasion in March 2003. The \u201dtourists\u201d documented the calm in Iraq, before it became a distant memory, when the colonialist vision of the neo-conservatives in America was replaced by an awakening into a nightmare. Created consciously and ironically, their photographs imitate the touristy custom to have one\u2019s picture taken with familiar sites as the backdrop, a practice which originated in the late 19th century, when European tourists started travelling beyond the boundaries of the continent. The two documented the damage caused by the invasion, when it was still possible to wander freely, to photograph the empty streets, and visit sites later closed to journalists. The two \u201dtourists\u201d assimilated among the American soldiers who were neither apprehensive of the lens nor attributed an unusual significance to the presence of the two. Without consideration of composition, lighting, or technical aspects, their attention was mainly directed at conveying their impressions, and their point of view was oriented toward documenting the events. The sense of irony elicited by this work and the sense of alienation with regard to the prevalent perception of presenting photographs in a gallery underscore the photographs\u2019 referent and the horror they expose.\r\n\r\nThe installation Neighborhood by Israeli artist Eli Petel\u2019s Neighborhood discusses the relationship between an image and the reality it represents. The installation comprises a digitally manipulated color photograph from 2005 and a video piece created three years later, for the exhibition. The photograph and the video present a residential quarter built in 1954 in Ramat Gan\u2019s Ramat Hashikma neighborhood to house Yemenite Jews, former inhabitants of the Salame, Kheiriya, and Saquiya transit camps. As part of the urban renewal project, a sign was hung on the building in 1977, presenting the redevelopment architectural plan intended for the neighborhood. It remained in place ever since as a testimony of the project\u2019s resounding failure. The gap between the reality of neglect and the faded promise is further emphasized in view of the sign\u2019s dilapidated state. In the photograph Petel uses the sign as a painters\u2019 palette: he samples colors from it in Photoshop, adding trees and skies to the building. The video screened next to it presents the same frame of the neighborhood at present, reconstructing the still photograph without the artist\u2019s digitally painted additions. In this work Petel alludes to several spaces: the territorial space of a residential area, the architectural counterpart of the housing block in Holon seen through the Gallery\u2019s glass wall; the museum space as representative of the Western artistic narrative; the space in which the exhibition is presented, which strives to dissolve dichotomous cultural representations; and the space between photograph-reality-viewer. While following the timeline of a single site, the installation Neighborhood strives to highlight acts such as reproduction, renewal, reconstruction, empowerment, intervention, and resistance as concepts and forces at once identical and antithetical, arising from a preoccupation with the historical\/political, as from the artistic act.\r\n\r\nJoseph Dadoune\u2019s sound work, Universes, sets out to form an alternative musical space attesting to his rejection of the crude classification of various musical styles as \u201dOriental music.\u201d In the local-Israeli context, the de-Arabization process applies to all the social and artistic apparati, and is also manifested in the exclusion of \u201dMizrahi\u201d music from the dominant cultural narrative in Israel as part of the overall exclusion of the Arabic language (\u201dthe enemy\u2019s language\u201d) in favor of the \u201dWesternizing\u201d Hebrew. Dadoune challenges this tendency, incorporating in his work excerpts of classical music and polyphonic Mediterranean singing. He frequently employs vinyl records, moving the record slowly to distort the sound and generate an archaic, blurred, deep sound. The \u201dworld music\u201d genre indicates the globalization of the music industry in recent decades and the way in which the incorporation of \u201dEastern\u201d manifestations often serves as a mere cover for a process of appropriation. Dadoune\u2019s work may be construed as representing a political stand, as it reflects a quasi-Western setting, albeit Universes is not necessarily such. Despite its elusive title, the work does not really fall into the category of \u201dworld music.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe work of Israeli artist Nurit Sharett, Moon on Mount Gerizim, sums up eighteen months of work during which the artist followed the Samaritan community during their religious festivals and holidays in their two major centers in Israel: Holon and Mt. Gerizim near Nablus. Sharett conveys her cumulating impressions of the customs and rituals of the Samaritans who invited her to join them, and some even opened their homes to her. As an onlooker, she outlines the cultural space unique to the Samaritans without being able to decipher it, much like cemeteries located around ancient cities, marking the disappearing city\u2019s borders. Acknowledging her limited abilities, Sharett\u2019s position oscillates between curiosity, expression of an opinion, impressions resulting from appearances, and admitting her partial knowledge. Thus her work illustrates the ways in which art introduces questions about the limitation of vision and the restricted ability to decipher cultural codes. Sharett\u2019s work is encapsulated in the sentence repeatedly confessing her limited knowledge at the outset of the project: \u201d730 men, six surnames, three languages, two neighborhoods.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\r\nThe works in the exhibition thus raise reflections about the interaction between cultures in contemporary global civilization. Globalization, as an outcome of modernity, makes for an intercultural encounter, yet its political exploitation by dominant interested parties has interfered with local singularities and weaker communities. It is precisely those who challenge the random, sterile assertions, such as minorities within minorities or ethnic groups foreign to the national identity of the state in which they live, who manage to escape this dichotomous cleansing and threaten the cultural and social system of classification. In this context, it is precisely the academic discourse of \u201dOriental studies\u201d that might outline arbitrary imaginary cultural borders in order to be differentiated and maintained, thus embedding the danger of double stereotyping\u2014self and \u201dexternal\u201d\u2014with regard to the dominant group. Separatism might, sometimes, suffer from blindness due to its tendency to mark those who differ from it as the ones who must be fought.\r\n\r\nMoreover, it ought to be acknowledged that not every encounter with Western cultures results in a cultural wound manifested in the form of political strife or a violent conflict. Although the intercultural encounter is sometimes underlain by ruler-ruled relations, such as 19th century European colonialism, and despite the fact that the financial and military power relations still conclusively lean toward the \u201dWest,\u201d the cultural encounter inevitably must also have enriched cultures and generated new hybrid expressions. Furthermore, one must bear in mind that just as the \u201dEastern\u201d cultures were defined as uniform, the Western cultures were also perceived similarly. Today one may see that not only is the \u201dEast\u201d explored by its colonizers, but the \u201dWest\u201d too is being examined by other cultures. In the last century, the world media (television, cinema, the press, and internet) have encoded information into patterns at accelerated speed; hence the stereotypical perceptions of both \u201dEast\u201d and \u201dWest\u201d are intensified. The call voiced by scholars, artists, and intellectuals from the \u201dEast\u201d to \u201dreinstate olden glory\u201d remains an irrational aspiration, whose feasible realization is doubtful. The grief accompanying the forbidden combination attests only to the unwillingness to confront the hybrid cultural reality that has existed around the world from time immemorial. One cannot ignore the fact that the Orient has undergone Orientalization and, as aforesaid, even adopted some of the stereotypes directed against it. Sometimes those demanding their \u201dlost\u201d identity have no other option but to recreate it through a fictive, elusive prism, often by internalizing the myth of cultural inferiority.\r\n\r\nToday more than ever, cultural identity seems to lack a single constant essence, and it seems to be based on the demand of a given subject or group to belong to a temporally defined idea. In this sense, the cultural conditioning forbidding hybrid crossing is paradoxical, since any culture by its very essence is a dynamic junction. The exhibition strives to reflect this situation where arbitrary borders are constantly dissolved.\r\n\r\nDor Guez\r\n\r\n1. The five prohibitions refer to sowing a field with two kinds of crops; grafting two different species of trees; mating two different species of cattle; performing agricultural work with two different species of harnessed animals; and wearing a cloth that combines two types of material (sha\u2019atnez). These prohibitions are repeated on several eoccasions in the Pentateuch (see: Lev. 19:19; Deut. 22:9-11), yet remain unexplained.\r\n2. See: Mishnayoth, trans. Philip Blackman (New York: Judaica Press, 1964), p. 177.\r\n3. See: Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage, 1996), p. 44.\r\n4. Homi K. Bhabha refers to hybridity as a \u201dthird space,\u201d which enables the emergence of other positions, new states, and not as two original conditions which engender a third; see: Rutherford Jonathan, \u201dThe Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,\u201d in: Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), p. 211.\r\n5. The West\u2019s identification with the Orient indicates a cultural phenomenon which is described in Western culture as \u201dgoing native.\u201d According to Hannah Naveh, this implies \u201drelinquishment of the Western cultural markers of identity and adoption of the markers of local indigenous (non-)culture. The inferiority of this process to Western eyes is also indicated by the equivalent idiom\u2014\u2019going primitive\u2019 \u2026 conveying scorn and disaffirmation from an ostensibly enlightened, culturally-developed position, deeming the process a reprehensible phenomenon.\u201d See: Hannah Naveh, Women and Men Travelers: Travel Narratives in Modern Hebrew Literature (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2002), pp. 188-89 [Hebrew].\r\n6. Many alternative names were proposed for the area spanning the territory where three continents\u2014Asia, Africa, and Europe\u2014meet, and whose borders \u201dexpand\u201d and \u201dcontract\u201d in keeping with the speaker. In political circles as well as the world media no other terms have prevailed as alternatives.\r\n7. These issues were also addressed in the local art world in several exhibitions, among them \u201dTo the East: Orientalism in the Arts in Israel\u201d (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1998; curator: Yigal Zalmona) and \u201dMother Tongue\u201d (Museum of Art, Ein Harod, 2002; curator: Tal Ben Zvi), whose catalogue was combined with an instructive collection of essays edited by Yigal Nizri, entitled Eastern Appearance: A Present that Stirs in the Thickets of its Arab Past (Tel Aviv: Bavel, 2004).\r\n8. See: Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991 (1978)).\r\n9. Gabriel Horenczyk and Salim J. Munayer\u2019s study examines the attitudes of Christian adolescents in Israel toward the Israeli-Jewish and Muslim-Arab majority groups, serving as a basis for the discussion presented here. See: Gabriel Horenczyk and Salim J. Munayer, \u201dAcculturation Orientations toward Two Majority Groups: The Case of Palestinian Arab Christian Adolescents in Israel\u201d, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 38, no. 1, 76-86 (2007)","bottom_gallery":null,"list_title":"","list":null,"platform_hours_title":"","platform_hours_content":"","platform_info_title":"","platform_info_phone":"","platform_info_cell":"","platform_info_email":"","platform_credits_title":"","platform_credits_subtitle":"","platform_credits_icons":null,"posts_query":"latest","posts":null,"select_term_id":null,"Code":"","Name":"","ID":"","BriefText":"","DetailText":"","ReviewUrl":"","TrailerUrl":"","DirectLink":"","SummarySaleStatus":"","LongMinutes":"","BreakMinutes":"","MediumImageUrl":"","SmallImageUrl":"","LargeImageUrl":"","ShowTypeId":"","RecommendedForSlideShowInGenres":"","ShowTypeName":"","EventDate":"","FormattedDate":"","ActualEventDate":"","StartSaleFrom":"","EndSaleAt":"","LastUpdate":"","SaleStatus":"","SoldOut":"","IsFutureSaleForDisplay":"","OwnerId":"","OwnerName":"","HallName":"","HallGuid":"","smallimage":null,"mediumimage":null,"largeimage":null,"event_display_dates":null,"gallery":[{"image":28201,"video":""},{"image":28199,"video":""}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Forbidden Junctions &#8226; 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