When the 60th Venice Art Biennale comes to a close on November 24, one pavilion, fully installed and ready to welcome visitors, will have never opened its doors. The Israel Pavilion, placed under round-the-clock police security, tragically remained inaccessible to viewers throughout the biennale’s eight-month run. I’m using the adjective ‘tragic’ here for several reasons, the most grave one being that a ceasefire and hostage release deal has not yet been reached between the Israeli government and representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which would have – hopefully – led to the end of the devastating war in Gaza. If there had been a ceasefire deal, artist Ruth Patir would have opened the pavilion, as she and the curators Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit stated in a written message, placed on the pavilion’s ground-floor’s glass façade, there since the biennale’s opening this past April.

When it became clear that the horrific war wouldn't end before late November, STIR requested a virtual tour of the artist's project – a first granted to any publication – which is installed across the pavilion’s three levels. Patir also shared the full-length video files projected inside the heavily guarded, otherwise empty exhibition space. This brings me to the other reason why I find it absolutely tragic that the work won’t be experienced by viewers in Venice this year: (M)otherland, as the installation is titled, is possibly the most defiantly feminist work in this year’s iteration of the globally important event. At a time when women’s rights and freedoms are being curbed all over the world, and their self-determination restricted—be it under totalitarian regimes or democratic ones, with potentially fatal outcomes in both—the pavilion’s closure comes as a twisted reflection of a sad reality. Namely, women’s voices and crucial narratives concerning their bodies are often the first to be lost in times of conflict.

In (M)otherland, the artist lets the viewers in on her personal unfinished medical journey following a diagnosis as a carrier of the BRCA2 gene mutation, which puts her at high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. As a woman in her mid-30s enrolled in the Israeli healthcare system, she can avail of state-funded procedures that include egg freezing. These otherwise costly treatments grant patients the possibility to bear children in the future, as the lifesaving recommendation for BRCA gene mutation carriers is, typically, a pre-emptive hysterectomy. But does she even want children, the artist finds herself wondering as she rushes from one medical exam to the next. And, while grateful for the subsidised advanced healthcare she has access to, Patir is also ambivalent about the Israeli state’s interest in her most intimate right, not to mention the most life-changing decision.

And here lies the crux of the matter. Traditionally, Judaism is matrilineal, and it is not lost on Patir that the state’s incentive to assist women in bringing babies to the world has to do with demographics; a woman’s private life choices are therefore a matter of public interest. What’s more, the question of motherhood in Judaism also invokes the history of sexual violence against women — an age-old warfare practice which led to a transition to a matrilineal tradition sometime in late antiquity, for fear that if determined by the father, Jews would ultimately be wiped out. Yet in the context of the war raging in the region and the unbearable casualties amongst civilians, women and children in Gaza, any engagement with the important, timeless issues that Patir’s work addresses seemed out of reach.

Protests, Inside and Out

The opening day of the Venice Biennale back in April saw a pre-organised protest calling to boycott the Israeli Pavilion (an open letter circulated before the opening garnered over 20,000 signatures, including those of artists and curators showing at the same biennale). Protesters marched down the Giardini towards the Israel Pavilion, calling to “Shut it down”— even though it was indeed closed.

Interestingly, the artist placed one video work showing a very different protest on the pavilion’s ground-floor level, which could be partially seen—but not heard—from outside, through the glass façade. Titled Keening (2024), the 2:30-minute animation shows a large congregation of archaeological terracotta figurines with female bodies protesting and wailing along a main throughway. The location is based on a real intersection in Tel Aviv, where, since early 2023, large numbers of Israelis have been protesting against their current far-right government. Initially, the weekly demonstrations had erupted in response to the government’s plan to reform the democratic judiciary system. However, since October of last year, Israelis have continuously protested their government’s failure to reach a diplomatic hostage release deal and end the war.

Some of the figurines in the animated video are fragmented, missing heads or limbs, and cracks running along their round bodies, like the real archaeological artefacts they are based on, a number of which are displayed behind a vitrine on the opposite wall. These likenesses of shattered women embody universal pain and anger; theirs is the collective cry of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters the world over. Their broken bodies, despite being 3D animations, are a gut-wrenching thing to watch — the images of disfigured humans that have flooded our handheld devices since the morning of October 07, 2023, are seared into a collective consciousness. But universal collective grief has become an audacious thing to talk about; their appeals remain unheard by anyone watching the video from outside. 

The real, palm-sized figurines, on loan from the National Treasures collections, were discovered in excavations around Jerusalem, and are similar to the ones that are found all across the Levant. (In a region where everything is political, archaeological excavations and artefacts have also long become the subject of national interest.)

Beyond Fertility

The artist explains that her interest in these enigmatic female figurines, which populate all the video works in (M)otherland, stems from inconclusive research surrounding their use. Patir has incorporated 3D-animated fertility figurines into several previous works, as she became fascinated with the idea that these rudimentary, 3000-year-old artefacts may have been crafted by individual women in their own image, like miniature self-portraits. As co-curator, Mira Lapidot points out in (M)otherland’s catalogue, “One of the exciting interpretations proposed for the renowned Venus of Willendorf (dated 29,500 before the present) suggests that the figurine’s dimensions and proportions correlate with a representation from the perspective of a woman looking down at her own body, in an age before the invention of mirrors.”

Long believed to represent fertility goddesses, researchers now suggest that these Levantine palm-sized statuettes could have also served for the protection of households, as they were largely found in sites of residence. Other purposes are possible as well, but what emerges from their widespread use is an image of a henotheistic society—worshipping one god, but not denying the existence of others—which would only become monotheistic much later. In Patir’s hands, and with her unsparing sense of humour, these ancient women become conduits of female agency. And to imbue them with agency, Patir becomes one.

In the 3D-animation video installations on the two upper floors, a figurine with bouncy curls bears a striking resemblance to the artist. Indeed, she stands in for Patir as she goes in and out of clinics, has awkward conversations with male doctors, injects herself with hormones, undergoes egg retrievals, and debates with herself, her boyfriend and her mother whether or not she actually wants to go ahead with the embryo retrieval process. One excruciatingly long scene homes in on the intrinsic discomfort of a medical breast examination. A male doctor’s strumming fingers, thoroughly feeling for any deep-tissue irregularities, becomes carried away in a rhythmic drumming sequence – after all, the statuette’s hollow clay breasts make for a perfect percussion instrument. It’s a pointed yet droll musing on the invasive indignities women often face within the medical industry, which sometimes call for coping through a certain degree of detachment.

When asked about basing this body of work on her medical odyssey, Patir explains, “As a young art student in Jerusalem, the leading discourses were Relational Aesthetics, Participatory Art and Post-identity — and any biographical elements in my work were immediately negated in that context. Then when I went to New York, I was taught the exact opposite: that the first-person narrative is the only one that contains any truth. These polarities interested me, particularly as I moved back to Israel, it shed an interesting light on the Israeli identity which constantly shifts from the individualistic to the profoundly communal.” She continues, “I found myself making work from this perspective, using iconography and animating it to tell very personal stories. By doing this I hope to both share vulnerability and also critique the idea of personal perspectives.”

Another duality that permeates Patir’s work is her use of advanced technology, such as 3D programming, MOCAP for facial expression imaging and motion capture (she owns a sensor suit) to create works that explore the technologies that organise and commodify our lives. In (M)otherland, one of the videos projected in the pavilion’s mezzanine is programmed to show TV broadcasting in real-time whenever a screen appears in the work — either as a TV hoisted in a corner at the fertility clinic’s waiting room or as the figurine’s smartphone. Oftentimes, the news would come up, showing images of wars waged around the world.

Every conversation in the videos capturing the figurine in clinics or her home is real and was recorded by the artist during actual appointments. (M)otherland is a candid, brave and nuanced work. It reflects on womanhood and the burdens of the female body in ways that many viewers could relate to, through the details that the artist so cleverly and attentively weaves into the work. It’s in a doctor’s impatient tone of voice; the uncertainty with which a penetrative question is answered; the heavy silence in a crowded waiting room; the small yet crushing indignities of a medical examination; and in the body’s own sabotage of a costly procedure. And while the artist addresses daunting topics head-on, she does so without bathos — after all, life’s drama plays out in the minutiae of the everyday. Patir’s story is intimately personal and yet gestures towards the universal. We can only hope that it will ultimately be viewed by the global audience that didn’t get to experience it in Venice.

The mandate of the 60th Venice Biennale, which aims to highlight under-represented artists and art histories, aligns with the STIR philosophy of challenging the status quo and presenting powerful perspectives. Explore our series on the Biennale, STIRring 'Everywhere' in Venice, which brings you a curated selection of the burgeoning creative activity in the historic city of Venice, in a range of textual and audiovisual formats.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its editors.)