Saher Mi’ari: Shockwave (Hedef), 2025

The sculpture Shockwave (Hedef) was created from elements of Saher Mi’ari’s earlier work Raft, made in 2020 especially for the space adjacent to the atelier at the Kupferman Collection House. In that piece – based on wooden formwork and concrete surfaces – Mi’ari examined the core foundations of the concept of home: wall and floor as symbols of grounding and stability, in contrast to the raft, a motif of wandering and the search for belonging.

As a result of war, destruction, and loss, those tangible and symbolic foundations were destabilized. According to Mi’ari, “the concept of ‘building’ became hollow and nearly vanished from our consciousness.” The transformation of reality made it difficult for him to continue in the spirit of his earlier practice, and a new urge emerged: to create a work that would express the pain and reflect the spirit of the time. This emotional need shaped the new artistic path as an attempt to explore whether repair is even possible within a fragile and shifting reality. The passage of time and ongoing destruction gave rise to a different kind of creation – one that moves between collapse and repair, between fracture and resilience.

Fragments of concrete from Raft are arranged here in a broken sequence, connected with iron rods like a ruptured spinal column – cracked, fractured, and disassembled – yet despite the blow it has sustained, still strives for uprightness. The shockwave (hedef) at the heart of the work exposes the tension between collapse and standing, between wounded material and the force that remains within it.

The sculpture’s placement near the olive tree preserves the connection to the local soil – the very ground that once united the residents of Mi’ari’s hometown, the village of Me’kar, with the community of Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot – and endows it with an anchor of memory and endurance.

The craft of construction, explored by both Kupferman and Mi’ari in the early stages of their artistic paths, shaped the content and formal language of their work: the longing for home, for stillness, for existential grounding, and the structure – grid, lines, and columns. This work once again touches on the question of what constitutes a home, and what remains of it when the foundations are already shaking. Despite the devastation and sorrow that define the current moment, the artwork sketches a gesture of rising – a faint echo of the possibility of repair among the ruins.

Tal Bechler, Curator