Akirot (uprootings)

Akirot (uprootings)

Akirot (uprootings), 2020
3 channel video, 7:50 minutes

The work Akirot (uprootings) is a personal account which lays out a complex set of identifications and disidentifications with the homeland, weaving together footage from two locations in Israel with illustrations from books of local flora. At the centre of the work is an unspoken conflict between mother and daughter considering their Israeli identity. Using my mother, a national nature trail guide, I explore the Israeli relation to the land and its plants as a site through which identity is constructed. Through the performative and symbolic gesture of uprooting the work deals with what is grounded in the motherland. As the term “motherland” suggests, land and mother are never distinguished from one another. The political objection to the land is at the same time a separation from the mother.