2005 The Hyphen
A three-phase installation project based on a photo taken at El Amari refugee camp (Ramallah) and exploring through spatial means different situations of connection, separation, and in-between in the Isreali-Palestinian context.
Exhibitions/events
- 2005 Israel, Holon: Holon Institute of Technology
- 2006 Israel, Tel Aviv: Artists House
- 2007 Israel, Petach Tikvah: Museum of Contemporary Art

Credits
- Drorit Gur Arie [museum director]
- Ronni Setter [director of HIT]
- Yona Fischer [independent curator]
- Artists House [financial support]
- Artists House [technical support]
- Holon Institute of Technology [technical support]
- Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) [financial support]
- Petach Tikvah Museum of Contemporary Art [financial support]
- Petach Tikvah Museum of Contemporary Art [technical support]


2005 The Hyphen
The Hyphen
A photo taken by the student of a friend of mine (sociologist Sylvaine Bulle) in Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah triggered the project. The picture shows a tree caught between two walls, standing in the inner space of one of the buildings and the external space of the other, and vice versa. This borderline situation brought me to reflect about language: the visual, conceptual, and metaphoric parallel with the hyphen, the short dash used to connect or separate words or syllables.

The first installation The Hyphen I. El Amari Refugee Camp (Ramallah) at the gallery of the Design faculty, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel (2005) replicates the original photo in real life. For it, I had a labyrinth, based on a Z shape, constructed in bricks. It had narrow passages and arrow slits opening to the outside. An uprooted cypress was placed between two blocks of concrete, as material representation of the hyphen. The installation creates an intermediary state between inside and outside. It is a metaphorical illustration of the in-between situation experienced by displaced persons (refugee, migrant).

The second installation The Hyphen II: Tel-Aviv—Jaffa at the Artists House, Tel-Aviv, Israel (2006) focuses on the local context. The name Tel-Aviv–Jaffa contains two types of hyphen. The first, connecting Tel and Aviv, indicates association. The name Tel-Aviv is connected to the name Jaffa with a different type of hyphen. It is a municipal hyphen, one of annexation; a hyphen whose very connecting function embodies separation. In 2009 Tel-Aviv was to celebrate the centennial of her founding. I asked myself: What about the other part of the name Tel-Aviv—Jaffa? What anniversary will Jaffa, the other “part” of the city, celebrate in 2009? The process of reconstruction leveled the physical space and abolished the contours of historical times in Jaffa and Tel-Aviv. Ancient and historical quarters have been erased for the sake of “progress.” The project deals with the geopolitical and demographical developments in this “united” territory. Through a series of drawing—earlier works such as Palimpsests and works created onsite at the border between Jaffa and Tel-Aviv—it evokes the power of the dash (drawing line).

The third installation The Hyphen III: The Cypress at Petach Tikvah Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2007) comes back to the original photo. It consists of a stage and a large wall painted in white and lit with a strong white cold light. At one third of the stage’s length, two chairs confront each other. At the second third, a hole is blocked with a cypress blocks. The installation symbolizes the impossibility of talking and exchanging mixed with the cypress as a local tree and a cultural symbol of death.