2024   

Turn back, O rebellious children 
 

Art Cube Artists' Studios, Jerusalem

Curator: Lee He Shulov

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Photos: Cheli Jusewitz

 

Plaster, iron mesh, caramel, thick aluminum paper, water colors, plastic

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The exhibition comprises three new works reflecting the artist’s processes over the
past few months. Neta Arbely maintains a creative process in parallel to her continuous
attempts to remain connected to the internal world she has chosen and her search for a
way to preserve her path. Arbely’s practice addresses the difficulty in living according
to value-based choices instead of being swept into places diverging from her choices.
She actively seeks a way to elude the dictates of the modern transactional world which
is one of consumption, hedonism, and the inability to defer immediate satisfaction.
Arbely fears that such a world leads people to confuse good and evil and find
themselves in situations in which values and order are overturned, in which a good
deed seems evil, and vice versa.
The exhibition title is taken from Jeremiah 3:22 in which the prophet calls upon the
people to return to a proper way of life. Taken together, the works are the repeated
rituals from Arbely’s daily practice performed to motivate her physical body to return
to the path of Malchut – the godly path of proper behavior
Trough, the first piece in the show, is a sculptural object made of metal mesh, plaster,
and caramel. The trough, whose function is to hold the water to slake the thirst of farm
animals, seems to have collapsed under the strain. The “water” seems to have been in
the trough for a long time: it looks filled with rust, and the water seems contaminated
and not fit to drink. It is made of melted sugar turned into caramel. Arbely chose sugar
as her material since she feels it embodies the duality of contemporary values. Sugar
hints at plenty, blessings, and economic riches, but also evokes the ills of modern
society and its pleasures, leading to moral decadence and deteriorated values. Although
sugar is one of the basic commodities, it is also an addictive drug added to
industrialized processed food whose overconsumption leads to diabetes, obesity, and
other illnesses.
The work refers to two classical sources: First is Jeremiah 2:13: “For my people have
done a twofold wrong: They have forsaken Me, the Found of living waters, and hewed
them out cisterns, broken cisterns, which cannot even hold water.” The second
reference is from Path of the Righteous by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato [known by the
acronym of his name, the “Ramchal”], which became the basic, most important work of
the Mussar Movement of the mid-19th century calling for an ethical religious life which
impacted the entire yeshiva world through the present. The Ramchal wrote that the
striving for and devotion to physical lusts and drives and letting oneself give in to bad

qualities such as anger, sadness, and pride, blind people and lead them into error. IN a
state of error, a person sees good as evil and evil as good, having lost one’s way to the
essential meaning of life. The text reads:
For behold the darkness of night causes man's eyes to err in two ways. (1) It
covers the eye so that he cannot see at all what is before him. (2) Or it deceives
him so that a pillar appears as if it is a man or a man as a pillar. So too, the
material and physicality of this world - behold it is darkness of night to the eye of
the intellect, and causes him to err on two fronts: First, it prevents him from
seeing the stumbling blocks standing in the ways of this world. Thus the
simpletons walk confidently, fall and are lost without having felt any prior fear.**
The Trough is a symbolic piece for the artist, constituting an inner call to publicize her
inner truth and not be drawn to alien influences.
Memorial Candles, is an installation made of metal mesh sacks, wax, a wick, and pencil
drawing on paper. This is a memorial installation inspired by the feasts held at the
graves of the righteous on the anniversary of their passing, in which followers of the
departed rabbi light candles to elevate the soul of the departed, and study the sage’s
writings. The drawing’s aesthetics are those of a printed death notice with decorative
elements in contrast to the cold, rigid rectangular font, restoring the curvatures of life
to the written text. The pencil drawing, “Ask your father, he will inform you,” is from
Deuteronomy 32:7: “Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past; ask
your father, he will inform you, your elders, they will tell you.” Arbely considers this
verse a directive for the pathway that will prevent her from becoming lost in the chaos
of the contemporary modern world.
In the modern west there is tension between worlds which hold to traditions of
knowledge and a connection to nature, and between worlds that attempt to invent
things out of nothing while ignoring the huge amount of knowledge transmitted over
millennia. Progress has generated inventions, but also outcomes that destroy humanity
and the world in which we live. We have frequently witnessed the polarity between the
power to create good and the force that can just as easily create evil, evident in the
current ecological crisis and the amount of garbage people are creating which threatens
to destroy us. The piece engages in mourning, is portable, continuous, and diasporic, yet
also refers to the custom of lighting candles on anniversary of a righteous figure’s
passing, called the “hillula” a festive memorial feast day, a day of studying the texts of
the departed to connect to his writings and thus continuing to give him life. Followers
study texts, hold a festive meal, and light candles to elevate the soul of the departed,
based on the belief that these acts merit participants with blessings. The sacks contain
treasures as well as grief and memory of the destruction of the Holy Temple and the

Exile. They also propose an orderly way of study and a readymade pathway for
continuing with life. In a way similar to the death notices with the painful drawing that
blurred the word for “father,” the work mourns the current loss of leadership while
testifying to it being found.
The final piece, Turn back, O rebellious children, which gives its name to the entire
exhibition, comprises a sculpture of a girl’s hand stealing a fish head from a serving
plate on the table of the fest. In a world whose order was shattered, it may be that
precisely it is the stratagem, rebellion, and the daring of a girl who is not intellectual
that can be what restores orderand creates a place of Tikkun – of reparation and repair
- and of redemption. The work refers to the custom of eating a fish head on Rosh
Hashana – Jewish New Year and the ritual wish chanted to its accompaniment: “May
we be a head and not a tail,” with the desire to return to the realm of Malchut to the
sefirah of Malchut – of kingliness - eternally in the background.

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* “Turn back, O rebellious children, I will heal your afflictions! ‘Here we are, we come to
You, for You, O LORD, are our God’” (Jeremiah 3:22).
** Path of the Righteous, 3:17-20. English translation:
https://www.sefaria.org.il/Mesilat_Yesharim?tab=contents

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Wrote by Lee He Shulov