Brand-New Middle East | Avishai Platek
Curator: Hadassa Cohen
Maya Gallery, 5.12.24 - 4.1.25

In the summer of 2023, after living in Tel Aviv for twenty years and just before the Swords of Iron War, Avishai Platek, Avital Cnaani, and their family moved to Kibbutz Kabri where they rented a home, located seven kilometers from the Lebanese border. Following the aftermath of October 7, all communities north of Kabri were being evacuated. From their home on the edge of the kibbutz, they could see and hear reverberations of war - an unrelenting nightmare. In recent months, with the intensifying fighting in the North, Kibbutz Kabri has become a frontline community as well. Educational institutions have closed, and as before the war, the family was forced to find a temporary home. Despite this profound instability, and the ever-shifting sense of "home," Platek has continued his meandering in natural landscapes, which have accompanied his work over the years.

The exhibition Brand-New Middle East was born from preparatory sketches made outdoors and Platek’s enquiry of the sabra cactus and the landscape he grew up in. For some time now, Platek has delved into ethnobotanical research, focusing on local habitats as reflections of history as well as biological and sociological power struggles. Unlike classic botanical painting, which portrays flora in isolation, Platek strives to situate the sabra within a broader, more complex portrayal, where nature becomes an active participant in the social and cultural narrative of his environment.

Through his wandering, Platek challenges the traditional romantic image of the flâneur (from the French: 'slouch') as a nostalgic seeker of salvation in nature; he presents a more complex and conscious approach . Though the landscapes are acutely familiar, his journeys are not a romantic escape or personal ascension, but a determined confrontation with deep strata of memories, politics, and history embedded within the landscape.
Platek’s approach presents wandering as a tool for critical exploration of space. On one hand, he engages with the foundational traditions of Israeli landscape painting, where landscape was used to foster connection and emotion toward the homeland. On the other hand, he resists glorification or idealization. By stepping out of his studio, he seeks to learn something new about the familiar, as this blindness is hidden, paradoxically, in what is taken for granted.

In this journey, the sabra has proven a compelling companion. In his roaming and rambling, dense and imposing sabras caught the artist's attention. These plants weren’t randomly scattered across the landscape; they were living markers, silent witnesses of Palestinian villages subsequently destroyed in 1948. Though time and dramatic changes in the land have ensued, the sabras remain like natural monuments, silently recounting a story that time has attempted to expunge.

The sabra cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica), originally from central and southern Mexico, arrived in the Mediterranean in the 16th century. In Israel, sabras were planted by Palestinians as hedges to demarcate fields and villages. Its Arabic name, sabar (صبر), meaning “patience,” reflects its resilience to drought. By the late 19th century in Jerusalem, the term “sabres” (סברעס) merged its Arabic origin with a Yiddish suffix. Both versions—the Hebrew and Yiddish-Arabic hybrid—survived attempts at linguistic supremacy and coexist side by side to this day.
The sabra cactus became so embedded in the Israeli landscape it felt as though it had always been there. Likewise, the image of the sabra took deep root in Israel’s cultural and artistic landscape, emerging as a powerful, yet contentious symbol reflecting shifting ideas of identity, belonging, and place. In the 1930s, “sabra” was first a derogatory term for the young generation of the first aliyah, quickly transformed into an ideal and anthropomorphic figure of Zionism, a reversal of the image of the exiled Jew. Meanwhile, after 1948, it also became a Palestinian symbol of resilience and resistance, representing attachment to the land (sumud صمود) and the principle of return.

Interestingly, though as a highly robust, independent, economical and subsistent species, the sabra embodies a stark contrast between its mythologized image and its biological essence—between the passions cast upon it and its thorny silence. Within the ever-changing winds, its silent vulnerability is exposed: As a result of climate change and lack of mobility, the cactus faces potential extinction due to the dactylopius opuntiae cochineal, an insect without natural predators in Israel, unlike Mexico. Like a tragic hero, its noble traits—its rootedness, its proud autonomy—may now bring it to the brink.

This exhibition views the sabra through a contemporary lens, touching upon humor and local history. In Platek’s works, the cactus is both familiar and foreign, a fertile ground for countless shapes, creatures, and truths reflecting existence and history in Israel. It appears as a local mutation, grappling between life and death—an omnipresent figure whose shadow looms. Through rebellious and at times haunting brushwork, Platek captures the cactus at the peak of its growth as signs of decay threaten to engulf it—a testament to the human insatiable destructive reach. In this way, the sabra attains a provocative, sensuous dimension, expressing untamed vitality even during its demise.

Nineteenth-century aesthetics and the realist artists of the 20th century imparted the value of observing nature. In the frantic pace of the 21st century, the importance of the process of study and the meaning of a sustained, meditative view—as a spiritual ritual—becomes even more critical. Thus, Platek invites us to pause, to deeply inhale "cactus-time", and unravel its hidden layers. From his walks, he returns to the studio, where imagined creatures, wild animals, and shy smiles emerge and perhaps even a cameo appearance from "Kishkashta". The painted leaves, gradually forming a surreal mosaic, echo the cactus's role as a living barrier meant to protect and enclose.

In these liminal spaces, Platek walks a fine line. His works twist and turn in impressive painterly acrobatics, with each brushstroke a taut muscle, a confrontation of color and form. Platek doesn’t simply paint; he shatters scenes of routine and fuses them into a bizarre, unconventional mosaic. He transforms from observer to alchemist, turning the familiar into a mystery that defies interpretation.

Through layers of paint, a sense of detachment leaches in. On the canvas, the cactus's surroundings become dreamlike and theatrical, a surreal stage with the plant—an anxious, restless anomaly—isolated in its own world. Platek filters the cactus through a lens that both deconstructs and reaffirms its cultural weight, inviting the viewer to see it not only as a political symbol, but as a living organism.

In this respect, light plays a crucial role in the works, highlighting different times of day and impacting the cactus's mental state. In his previous works, Platek has explored the interplay between presence and absence, a theme he deepens here. Utilizing light as a central element, he creates a complex visual space where images reflect his ongoing contemplation of transience, of presence and absence in our world. Theorist Paul Virilio suggests that modernity is defined by the relationship between appearance and disappearance, not between phenomenon and reality. Platek captures that fleeting moment between the visible and the concealed, embodying an aesthetic of disappearance in a world in which physical and imaginary realities blend seamlessly.
In most of these works, time is suggestive and elusive, yielding a sense of uncertainty. Is this a sunset signaling the end of the day or the dawn of a new beginning? This ambiguity summons us to view the moment as simultaneously reflecting potential collapse and renewal, urging us to listen to the landscape's resonant voices and imagine a possible future through painting.