Art Espionage
Lola Ben Alon, Sharon Yabo Ayalon,
Keren Mor, Amit Matalon,
Menashe Noy, Daniel Shoshan


This megalomanic-absurd project started with a map of Israel downloaded from Google. The members of the group cut out pieces of landscape from it, from Acre to the Golan Heights and from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee. They divided them into 1,000 squares and photographed each square individually. Then they traveled to China, to the city of Yiwu, to a market where goods are sold for the Western market. After some trial and error, they chose a painting factory whose workers - that is, whose painters - were asked to paint, based on the digital files, 1,000 small landscape paintings, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 centimeters each, in any style of painting, without any direction from the members of the group.

Underlying the project is an attempt to detach the Israeli landscape from the myths and ideological baggage, while at the same time detaching painting from its own myths. Both the landscape and the medium of painting are presented as readymade products - taken, borrowed, traded. The sliced and fragmented Google landscape is supposed to represent neutral landscape, which is not sacred and is not political, is not in dispute and is not within the national consensus or outside of it. This is landscape that is divided into arbitrary squares and painted by painters for whom the names of the places and their historical past carry no meaning. Their hand holding the paintbrush is a hand for hire.

The work is sponsored by: Arkin Foundation, Survey of Israel, Consulate General of Israel in Shanghai, Shanghai Bund Investment Group, Melisron, Inc., Igal Ahouvi, Haifa Museum of Art