Exile
The series exile originated from a documentation of the concentration camp Camp Des Milles in the south of France in its transformation from an untouched historical site to a memorial museum. Stepping into the camp in 2012 when I entered it for the first time, it was standing as it was since the second world war, its history complex and unclaimed. I was struck by the sense of horror and fear saturated in its dark halls and by the sensation of past and present equally present. The new and confusing normalization from the fact that the camp was not presented to me in the way that I was used to, set as part of a ceremonial pilgrimage, but as a complex place with different meanings to the various local and international communities. And yet so quiet, standing still. The following year, documenting the construction work in the place, an uncanny mix of old and new, reconstructions and repurposing, equipment and tools replaced the silence. I was witnessing an active construction of ethos and memory. As an immigrant from Israel to the US for many years, it resonated with changes in landscapes and other locations in Israel and the west bank, which I see over the years, and the way these visual methods construct memories and deliver ideologies.
