Magnum Opus III

Artists House Jerusalem- Beit Haomanim Gallery, Jerusalem, 1998

This rather complex installation spread over five spaces included a wall drawing of the atomic mushroom in the entrance to the space. In a second space portraits of the gallery staff where printed into the wall. In a third room Ashery’s had transferred all the furniture from her bedroom in her parent’s flat in Jerusalem as they were left since she left Israel in 1987.

Contemporary magazines from England were brought over and put over the beds to express the gap the departure had caused. A fourth space was turned into a camera obscura were the street outside was reflecting upside down into the back wall. A fifth space was titled moderates physical pressure, a term used to describe usually Arab prisoner’s torture in Israel. The spaces included medicine cabinet full of painkillers for all possible types of pain, photographic prints of club scenes obscured by ropes and a stool with small nails hammered into it.

A black graffiti saying in Hebrew Bomb, Bomb-Shell, was painted over in white and covered up after the opening. No staff member from the gallery own- up to it to date. The writer Eilat Negev who wrote a long article on Ashery’s work in 2004 investigated the matter further but did not achieve any results either.