Queer sexual identities are declared diseases, to be cured at state-sponsored medical centers. Abortion is illegal and birth control pills are contraband, only available on the black market. Human rights organizations are outlawed, and any activism is met with police brutality. Left-wing literature has been banned and must be secretly smuggled underground.
For the second time in two weeks, a young Israeli artist is using their design skills to provoke the public by portraying the dangerous direction they see their country steadily heading towards. For her final project at the Holon Institute of Technology, Sivan Hurvitz presented 'Turn Right at the End of the World,' a critique of Israel's political shift to the right.
'Turn Right' is a series of posters drawn like the panels of a comic book, computer-inked using desaturated colors, to suggest a social space that has been subjugated. If Yosi Even Kama's 'State of Judea' series imagines the war of words that takes place on public notice boards only a few years into a possibly fascist future, Hurvitz illustrates what the potentially totalitarian regime will look like in the streets and the squares, in the cafes and the classrooms.
'A state that crushes democracy'
In her introduction to the exhibit, Hurvitz says, "Recently, it would seem as if Israeli citizens and their political representatives have decided that democracy is not so important -- and is sometimes even an annoyance. Every other day a racist bill is presented to the Knesset, or there is an incident of army or police brutality, or political activists are persecuted."
Hurvitz says that she started to come to these pessimistic conclusions after she spent a semester abroad that coincided with the most recent Israeli assault on Gaza. "I used to think that people who don't live here cannot possibly understand what it's really like. But when I was out of the country, I was surprised to find that these people were not ignorant at all -- in fact, they proved to be very knowledgeable."
"When I came back to Israel, I started to ask hard questions: perhaps it was we (Israelis) who could not see the forest for the trees?" Hurvitz continued. "Now I know that the Ministry of Education and the media are controlling the internal political discourse in Israel. The government is instilling fear in us. And a people that are fearful will act aggressively. Fear clouds our need for freedom, our sense of justice."
'Blind loyalty'
The last couple of years have seen a turn for the worse, Hurvitz notes, but the problem goes much deeper than that. "There is a huge paradox that lies at the heart of the Israeli state, its designation as 'Jewish and democratic.' Which is paramount? Judaism or democracy? Before I am a woman, or Jewish, or Israeli, I am human. And I believe that rights should be based on our humanity, not on whether we are Jewish or not, or how Jewish we are or aren't."
If our democracy is indeed deteriorating, does Hurvitz believe that political art can do anything about it? "Maybe it can, and maybe it can't," Hurvitz says. "Political artists far more talented than myself have been saying the same thing for years... and yet, here we are. People understand the problem, but then they sit back down in front of their television sets. It's really hot outside, it's hard to get people out of the house."
"But then again, if art can convince people to buy one particular brand of laundry detergent or another -- maybe it can also get them out into the streets."
