The Israel Museum takes great pride in presenting a retrospective exhibition of the oeuvre of Christian Boltanski (01.06.2018 - 31.10.2018), has long been a notable figure on the international art scene. Since the 1970s his art explores mechanisms of commemoration via objects and photographs that people have left behind. Over the years he has investigated memorial rituals and relics in various religions and societies, integrating them with his own memories to challenge his viewers with universal questions: if and how it is really possible to remember? In what ways can images promote – or perhaps impair – memorialization?
This exhibition present seminal early works as Ombres, Monument, and Autel, together with recent large-scale installations, and several new site-specific projects created specifically for this retrospective. One of the newly created works is the video Animitas, 300 wind bells that was filmed in the cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea, at a dramatic site located exactly at sea level. Brought together into a powerful whole, these products of decades of creativity carries local and historical significance while posing human questions beyond place and time. (Text: Israel Museum Jerusalem)