​Mom, Dad, and all the rest

Parenting In Times of War

It is the third year of an ongoing war. Parents, sons, daughters, sisters, and brothers

are mobilized to defend their homeland, and amidst all this, relationships and

parenthood are thrown into turmoil. The ongoing state of emergency makes it difficult

to maintain a routine, and hope for a secure future is threatened in the shadow of the

present. Those left behind cling to mundane acts of existence: feeding, tucking in,

supporting, protecting, waiting for the war to end, surviving.

However, war does not end upon one’s return from the front. It continues to exist in

memory, scars, language, and within family dynamics, shaping how parents recount

the past to their children and imagine their future. The promises parents make to

their children – that when they grow up they will no longer have to serve in the

military (The Winter of 73, Shmuel Hasfari), or conversely, that "when he grows up, he

will be a general” (When You Grow Up, Yaakov Gilad) – shift according to worldview,

generation, and the historical moment in which they are made. Nevertheless, behind

them lies the same fundamental parental instinct: to secure a future for one’s child,

even when there is no true way to control it.

At the moment of departure for the front, a soldier is not just a soldier. He/she is also

a son/daugher, a child, and a parent. The soldier’s parents, left at home,, unable to

sleep, wish fervently for another moment to embrace and cradle their child. A parent

heading to war might suddenly find a tiny sock in his/her bag, alongside an

ammunition clip and khaki uniform. All soldiers carry with them the sum of their roles

and identities: soldier, man/woman, husband/wife, parent and child. Within a single

bag, within a single body, war and home coexist.

The exhibition seeks to examine how a reality of continuous threats shapes the

experience of parenthood, and how the experience of war transitions between the

private and the collective and across generations, offering a dialogue between

historical memory and the present. In doing so, it explores both the continuity and the

shifts in the human and familial experience across generations of conflict.

The sequence of works is anchored by two complementary perspectives. The first is

an internal, personal, biographical, and experiential gaze. The second is an external,

observational, investigative, and interpretive gaze that places the local story within

broader historical and social contexts. The intersection of these two perspectives

allows for an exploration of the relationship between the personal story and the

national narrative, and how communal events are absorbed into family life, taking on

new meaning. This includes the profound affinity with the foundational narrative of

Gush Etzion.

This group exhibition brings together young and veteran artists, presenting a

spectrum of manifestations of parenthood. Through this, the discourse expands to

encompass concepts of home, belonging, memory, and identity. Home and family

appear both as a physical place and as an emotional conceptual place to which one

longs to return, a place from which one departs, and a place one wishes to protect,

even from afar.

The exhibition seeks to give artistic expression to a local experience of universal

significance, offering a fresh perspective on parenthood as an act of protection,

memory, longing, choice, and hope.

Producer: Revital Stern

* “Mom, Dad, and All the Rest” (Lyrics: Sgt. Reuven Politi, Composition: Idan Raichel)