In 2015 Tsibi Geva presented 'Archeology of the Present' in the Israeli Pavilion at The 56th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Geva, who lives and works in Tel Aviv, is one of Israel’s most prominent and influential artists and has exhibited extensively in major exhibitions across Israel, America, and Europe.
His show 'Archeology of the Present' extended outside the pavilion as well as through its interior, destabilising familiar divisions between inside and outdoors, functional and representational, high and low, abandoned, found, and manipulated elements. It encompassed formal and thematic elements characteristic of Geva’s work throughout his career.
The exhibition presented paintings alongside sculptural installations and abandoned and manipulated objects, abolishing hierarchical distinctions between artistic mediums and structures. In doing so, the project gave an expression of Geva’s ongoing concern with elements related to the notion of ‘home’ – including terrazzo tiles, windows, shutters, lattices, and cement blocks; elements which exist as fragments of what once was, or could in principle constitute, a home. Tseba's work poses self-reflexive artistic concerns and epistemological questions, as well as political and cultural interrogations about locality and immigration, hybrid identity, existential anxiety and existence in an age of instability.
