"The Years of Our Lives": Revisited Nostalgias in Tel Aviv

Izabella Volovnik, 2022

In an era marked by uncertainty and fragmentation, the past becomes both a refuge and a mirror.The exceptional exhibition The Years of Our Lives, curated by Mia Frankel, will open this Friday, July 11, at the Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv. It brings together works by Olga Kundina, Orian Yaakobi, Isabella Wolovnik, Efrat Hakimi, Boaz Noy, Dafna Ben Ari, Zoya Cherkassky, Zamir Shatz, Tal Shochat, Yael Wertheim Soen, Liat Elbling, Noy and Tamir, Noa Ironik, Roni Landa, Roy Rosen, Rachel Kini, Shai Dror, and Shirley Wagner.

Each artist explores, in their own way, our relationship with the past—often tinged with nostalgia and a lucid irony. In times of crisis, when reality feels unstable, imperfect, and devoid of meaning, a kind of collective melancholy emerges, accompanied by an idealized vision of a supposed "golden age"—real or imagined.

This nostalgia takes shape through objects, places, and images that activate emotional memory, though they don’t always correspond to an authentic past. Memory often becomes a construction, and the artists in this exhibition explore its mechanisms: the fetishization of the past, aesthetic recycling, and identity myth-making. This turn toward yesterday may be comforting, but it also raises significant cultural and political questions.

In the 20th century, nostalgia permeated art, design, and pop culture through the revival of past styles. Today, it sometimes glorifies rigid national narratives, hindering hybrid and fluid identities shaped by globalization, migration, and mobility. The works on view here take a critical look at these memory-based distortions.

In her video Stars Outside, Tal Shochat evokes her family’s story and their emigration from Arab countries to Israel. She reinvents an Orientalist vision infused with nostalgia for a lost home, echoing the writings of Jacqueline Kahanoff and her Levantine utopia.

Dafna Ben Ari paints on used textiles, salvaged from the street, from Teruma institutions, and even from her own parents. Her works Girl with Butterflies in Her Hair and Class Game, painted on an old mattress and embroidered towels, evoke childhood innocence while exuding an unsettling strangeness.

Olga Kundina, Portrait

Zoya Cherkassky revisits late 20th-century pop culture with a series of hand-painted "vinyl records." These shiny, saturated objects offer an ironic homage to the analog era and its illusions of innocence.

Roni Landa presents floral wallpaper inspired by Art Nouveau and the patterns of William Morris, a founding figure of the Arts and Crafts movement. But a closer look reveals a creeping decay: insects, worms, and wilted stems infiltrate the décor, transforming sweetness into menace.

Orian Yaakobi, responding to echoes of contemporary catastrophe, draws from biblical narratives such as the Creation and the Flood. Her stylized paintings—reminiscent of woodcuts or linocuts—incorporate luminescent pigments meant to indicate emergency exits, a nod to our anxiety-ridden present.

Her repetitive motifs, upon closer inspection, reveal signs of disintegration and a variety of insects and worms living among the stems and petals. Apocalyptic thoughts about war and disaster have rekindled her interest in myths such as the creation of the world and Noah’s flood.

Yael Wertheim Soen, in All hours, explores repetition and the erosion of time through compositions that evoke the frozen beauty of a daily life quietly falling apart.

By reinterpreting the past through personal objects, symbols, and narratives, the artists in this exhibition offer a subtle and often critical reflection on contemporary nostalgia. Far from being a simple step backward, The Years of Our Lives proposes a sensitive and clear-eyed exploration of our relationship to memory—one shaped by tenderness, irony, and warning. It invites us to contemplate what we do with our memories—and what our memories do to us.

An original exhibition to discover until August 30 at Rosenfeld Gallery, 1 HaMifal Street.

Caroline Haïat