An artist interview with Leor Grady
Leor Grady is an Israeli artist whose work investigates the intersection between his personal experiences and different aspects of his identity. Grady explores daily objects and experiences to create conceptual, sculptural, textile, and video works that are at once poetic and subversive. Grady’s art contests the Ashkenazi hegemony that has shaped and controlled the institutional fields of art and culture in Israel and, indeed, most of the Jewish world. Grady’s work excavates voices and events that have been excluded from the Zionist narrative and gives them a respectful stage that is visually and textually rich.
His art responds to other artists, such as Glenn Ligon and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who investigate the personal and political relationships between their intersectional identities, environment, and the age in which they live—artists whose work is minimalist but still political. He also cites the poetic nature of James Baldwin’s writing as a major influence.
He often works with domestic objects (books, linen, handkerchiefs) and quotidian materials (paper, cement) taken from his immediate environment. The use of these materials and objects gives him the opportunity to create art that breaks the boundaries erected by mainstream art institutions. In so doing, Grady believes he can reach a wider range of viewers.
Grady’s work has been shown at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, Haifa Museum of Arts, Rush Arts Gallery, Exit Art, Y Gallery, and The Center for Book Arts in New York City. It is included in public and private collections and in various publications.
GrayLit: We were intrigued by one of your most recent works, Po’el Tivi (Natural Worker). Your work is about the Kinneret, or (as it known in English) the Sea of Galilee, located in the northeastern region of Israel, near the borders with Jordan and Syria. Until the recent drought, the Kinneret was Israel’s largest source of fresh drinking water. The Kinneret has a special place in the Zionist story and narrative. Early Jewish settlers set up their first homes here in the early 20th century, making it, according to Zionist history, the birthplace of the “New Jew”: a secular, strong, hardworking individual, often a farmer. This figure contrasts with the weak and powerless diasporic Jew. But the Zionist narrative leaves some actors out. Can you tell us who these actors were and how you became interested in the subject?
Leor Grady: The Kinneret is an Israeli and Zionist symbol and image, in contrast with Jerusalem, which is considered too religious, and Tel-Aviv, which is too cosmopolitan. The story of pioneers who settled on its shores erases the major role played by the Yemenite Jews. Even though they arrived in the early 20th century, a few years before Jews arrived from Eastern Europe, and even though they contributed and worked to develop the new settlements along the Kinneret, they were never accepted and treated equally by the Zionist leadership and establishments of the time (and in many ways this continues today).
“He, the simple worker, the natural worker—he can work in any job, shameless, without philosophy and without poetry.”
GL: There’s a sense in which, in the Kinneret, Zionism sought to carve itself a universal symbol. But in doing so it ignored the group of Yemenites you speak of, who settled along the Kinneret’s coast in the early 1900s, performing those quintessential Zionist pioneer tasks of draining swamps, planting eucalyptus trees to prepare the soil for farming, and raising livestock. When several years later Zionist leadership supported a wave of immigration from Europe that settled nearby, the Yemenites were suddenly met with restrictions which were intended to make their lives hard—and, ultimately, they were driven out.
LG: For me, the story of the Yemenite Jews is reminiscent of the story of the poet Rachel whose spirit and body was unable to survive the harsh condition of living on the Kinneret’s shores. In both Rachel’s case and the case of the Yemenite Jews, not only did the Zionist leadership offer no support—it put them under pressure to relocate somewhere far away from the Kinneret.
GL: Until this day the Kinneret Yemenites are barely mentioned in history books and not many Israelis know that such a settlement even existed. How does your work seek to remedy this memory gap?
LG: In my collection of work Natural Worker exhibited at “Ha’Kibutz” gallery in Tel-Aviv in early 2017, I presented a video, paintings, and letters that tell the historic story of the Kinneret Yemenite community from their experience and point of view, which is absent from the mainstream Zionist Israeli narrative. Before they were pushed out, the Yemenites sent letters to the Zionist leadership asking for recognition of their hardships and demanding that they be treated as equals. These letters used a rich and poetic language that borrows from biblical Hebrew structures. I gave this language a central place in the exhibition, embroidering the source text with gold thread on linen. These pieces were staged on the main gallery wall.
GL: Can you tell me about your work as the head of the arts department at Minshar School of Arts in Tel-Aviv? Is Minshar able to give a platform to different voices?
LG: To me, it’s important to be part of an educational institution that connects the arts with the community. Minshar as an institution is very sensitive to Israeli reality. The diversity of our students, faculty, and staff is strong evidence of this; it reflects the diverse identities in Israeli society.
GL: In a previous conversation, you mentioned that something as simple as walking down the street in Tel-Aviv feels to you sometimes like a “political act.” What did you mean by that?
LG: Day-to-day life in Israel is inseparable from a dynamic political reality. Every time you walk down the street, you have to confront and deal with the national collective narrative and the accompanying complexities, divisions, and denials. My art exists at the intersection of these conflicts.
GL: You and I once talked about the differences between the national cultural narratives of Israel and the United States, and what kinds of personal sacrifice are required to assimilate in each society. In the States, for example, the forces of assimilation is so strong that some erasure of your past, whether personal or cultural, is expected. What is the parallel process in Israel, in your opinion? What are the intellectual and cultural requirements to be a citizen in Israel?
LG: Israel is not a state but a very big family. I say this because life here brings with it immense difficulty but also affords you a strong sense of familial closeness. It’s almost embedded in the fabric of our lives here. I recognize that this experience is the result of a complex, distorted Zionist approach meant to produce a feeling of belonging connected to this land. Israel is notoriously devoid of rituals in its everyday life. Our existence here is at turns practical, taxing, and endearing—and that all depends on the time of day! For example, take any sidewalk in Tel-Aviv: you’re likely to see it’s shared between an illegally parked car, a parent pushing a baby stroller, a bike lane, and recycling bin. Walking down that sidewalk, you are simultaneously part of the space and a nuisance.