Earthsea

Opening 25.7.2025

An Exhibition for Boys and Girls

Participating artists: Bar Zafrir, Leila Rose Bari, Guy Ben-Ner, Karen Dolev, Uri Katzenstein, Noa Kurnick, Saher Miari, Adam Rabinowitz, Moshe Roas, Omer Shach, Yehudit Sasportas, Mai Zisman, Ohad Hadad

The exhibition Earthsea invites viewers to embark on a voyage to a far-off island, mysterious and free, into the realm of imagination. This island is a sanctuary for the dreamy, curious soul – a place of freedom and adventure, existing somewhere there, on a real island, and here, in our mind’s eye. 

The exhibition unfolds through various moments of a full day and night on the island, starting at sunrise, passing into noon, gliding through the warm sunset and twilight hours, and concluding in a moonlit night. The works in the exhibition are like fragments of a memory of an imagined island life – a collection of sights, objects, emotions, and stories born on this remote piece of land. Several of the works display images of the sea, the moon, a bonfire, or a boat. Others invite us to think about the kind of life we would lead on an island, the things we would miss, and those we would be happy to be rid of, as well as the inventions we would come up with in the quietness and monotony of island life. 

Interestingly, the island, a uniquely distinct piece of land, has become a symbol of freedom in literature and art, representing a space that challenges conventional thinking and encourages the imagination to roam free. The exhibition title is inspired by the fantasy world of writer Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series (1968-2001). Le Guin created a world of archipelagos, where every journey begins with a maritime adventure. Traces of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), in which the protagonist survives alone on an island, can also be sensed in the exhibition, as an adventurous spirit serves as a creative engine. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) is a classic story of a child’s voyage to a mysterious island full of pirates and secret maps. These and other literary islands are places of self-discovery, freedom, and often also confrontations with the unknown. 

Earthsea is an exhibition that drifts across the waves, far from the familiar and known, to a place where the rules of home, city, or school fade away. The exhibition embodies the desire to be in a place that transcends the limits of time, inviting us to surrender to the playfulness of dreaming and imagining.