Ruti Sela, ‘Hugs’, 2025

The inception of this exhibition was Ruti Sela’s desire to re-enact her performance, “Hugs,” filmed in Jerusalem in 1999. The outcome forms the central artwork at the exhibition in which the artist wanders through the streets of Jerusalem to collect hugs from strangers. In the new video, made 25 years after the original, comprises sound, once again Sela invites people on the street to hug her. This essentially innocent action reflects the many changes that the western part of Jerusalem underwent: the streets, the residents, the attitude to technology and to photography (made in the current era of constant documentation, during the terrible “war of images” that has become even more extreme since October 7th. In Sela’s video, the scenes pause within the moment in contrast to the constant transformations characterizing social media. On view were three earlier video works: Hugs, the original 1999 video filmed in the streets of Jerusalem, with no sound and no text besides body language. Hugs #2 (2017), features the artist’s son being hugged in his kindergarten on his birthday. The teacher seems to be asking/telling the children to hug the boy, the rhythm and tone of her voice leaving both parties no option of rejecting the closeness. The third work is Therms and Conditions (2022), made in collaboration with Maayan Amir, filmed in infrared thermography through the scope of a weapon in an attempt to document on film traces of human body heat generated by strangers rubbing hands on the artists’ bodies. The gun and the camera become one, but here the scope is not used to prepare for a kill but to document a moment of closeness between strangers, contact that was prohibited during the pandemic.