Craft and Leisure

The name of the current exhibition, "Work and Idleness", was inspired by the essay "Courage for the Poor", written by Leah Goldberg in 1938 in the newspaper "Torim". The exhibition is part of the reopening of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Museum. 4 curators, 27 creators, 13 groups and 10 family business stories come together for one exhibition. The craft and idleness, which exist in the city side by side, allow it to grow into the unique and familiar, intimate and public, renewing and inspiring city that we all know.
In preparation for the exhibition, we located archival research materials and stories of entrepreneurship and craft alongside idleness and creation in Jaffa and Tel Aviv in the past and present. The works in the exhibition ask about the role of action and freedom, entrepreneurship and idleness in Tel Aviv-Jaffa from its early days until today. In motion or at rest, in idleness or in work clothes, in flip flops or an ironed shirt, in the neighborhood cafe or in the craft workshops, in the storm of the protest or the shuffling routine - craft and idleness are the beating heart of the city and feed timeless stories of urban pioneering and economic, cultural and community entrepreneurship.

Together with the group of selected creators, we set out on a journey that expanded the mind and the heart. We conducted tours of forgotten workshops in the most hidden corners of the city, we met key figures from the worlds of design, art, culture and research, who with great talent launched between personal stories and historical data, between past and present and between creation and city. The purpose of the meetings was to accompany the creators individually and as a group, and to serve as a practical and professional framework, while mutually feeding ideas and personal experience.

The issue of unemployment was of crucial importance in the establishment of this process. As creators in a field where there is never a scarce moment, we talked about the vitality of idleness in an era of excess and hyper-production and in a complex local reality. Meanwhile, we sought to extract the creative DNA of Tel Aviv, the one characterized by uncompromising idleness and insatiable inventiveness.

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Curator: Galit Gaon
Co-curator: Hadassa Cohen