Sof Exhibition (2005)

Solo exhibition at HaMidrasha Gallery, Kalmania
Curator: David Ginton

The series of pencil drawings presented in this exhibition was created eight years prior, while Eli Petel was still a student in the Fine Arts department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, in the framework of a drawing class he took. Drawn from memory, these 73 drawings depict the route from Jerusalem to Ramallah, as experienced by Petel during his military service as a Shekemist (seller at a kiosk) in the Beit El settlement between the years 1992-1995.

 This landscape captures one side of the 12 km road, consisting of many architectural elements – a modern Jewish neighborhood, a Palestinian village, a refugee camp, villas, a community center, fences, walls, checkpoints, lottery stands, and watch towers.

 The drawings are accompanied by a guide that helps in mapping the visual memories derived from a state of fear, leading us to the conclusion that the worse the economic status of a particular society is, the higher its birth rate, and thus, the violence within it.