Naama Arad’s ‘Har Hazofim’ quotes the view from the window of the fictional Frank Lloyd Wright creation from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic ‘North by Northwest.’ A peach-toned silken curtain intervenes between our gaze and the Xerox copies pasted to the opposite wall on which landscapes can be seen. The paternalistic presidential visages of Mount Rushmore and the modernist architecture both see their material and ideological texture inverted in the most tender of feminist veilings. The title of the work refers to the mountain of the same name, and Israeli enclave in East Jerusalem that houses the Bezalel Academy of Art founded in 1906.
On public view for the first time are five illustrations done by the gay communist author Ronald M. Schernikau on newspaper. They are taken from his artistic estate, which is now housed in the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts). The reworking of the picture’s caption by simply striking them through obscures the motifs and allows a homoerotic reading of the men presented.