Israel’s Pavilion for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale highlights the impact of intensive mechanized agriculture on landscapes and ecosystems, as well as the disruption caused to local communities. Titled Land. Milk. Honey and curated by an interdisciplinary team comprising Dan Hasson, Iddo Ginat, Rachel Gottesman, Yonatan Cohen and Tamar Novick, the exhibition portrays the fundamental changes experienced by the region through the stories of local animals, constructing a history of the 20th-century development.
The Israel Pavilion examines the relationships between humans, animals and the environment within the local context. Israel’s economic growth aspirations have been translated into the landscape through urbanization, massive infrastructure projects and expansive mechanized agriculture. The latter is a significant driving point of prosperity for the region, but its impact on fauna and flora is now being evaluated, and the exhibition highlights the environmental and social challenges resulting from the intensive agricultural exploitation of the past century.
Land.Milk.Honey highlights the far-reaching changes to the landscape brought by technology, using a zoocentric analysis that comprises five study cases represented by local animals, domesticated and wild: cows, goats, honeybees, water buffalos and bats. These animals are part of the multifaceted narrative of the introduction of modernity to the region and showcase how the transformation of the land came at a high cost for local fauna and flora. The exhibition emphasizes the need to establish a new kind of relationship between human, animal and the environment.
The Pavilion is divided into five acts: Mechanization, Territory, Cohabitation, Extinction, and the Post-Human, which together make up the history of a space almost entirely reworked by humans. In addition, the Pavilion will feature art installations, models, short films, archival photos and a dedicated soundtrack, which are woven together to highlight the impact of agriculture on the land.
- Commissioned by: Israel Ministry of Culture and Sport - Museums and Visual Arts Department, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs -Cultural Diplomacy Bureau
- Commissioners: Michael Gov, Arad Turgeman
- Curators: Dan Hasson, Iddo Ginat, Rachel Gottesman, Yonatan Cohen and Tamar Novic
- Exhibitors: Netta Laufer, Shadi Habib Allah, Aviad Bar-Ness, Gili Marin, Adam Havkin, Daniel Meir, Apollo Legisamo, and Sarale Gur Lavi
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