Exhibitions

This exhibition marks three decades since that major wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union. The influx made a decisive impact on Israel, not only in terms of its sheer numbers, but in the distinct culture and outlook that the new immigrants brought with them. Although they settled throughout the country, the city of Haifa stood out because of the size of the community that made its home there. Its presence began to be felt throughout the city, on Russian-language signs, in shops, a variety of workplaces, and more. The new immigrants were able to preserve their old culture and traditions almost entirely, while at the same time acclimating to their new country. They rebuilt their lives in Israel – and within it, Haifa – achieving in essence their own private perestroika.

The history of Haifa's gay community is long and fascinating, yet despite its importance on both the local and national level, it has largely remained concealed. In the study of queer history in Israel, as a field addressing the plight of sexual and gender minorities, it is the history of Tel Aviv that has most often been documented; Tel Aviv also figures prominently in the collective memory of the local gay community. The chronology of the gay struggle in Israel, including films on this subject, tends to tell a Tel-Avivian tale, with occasional flickers of Jerusalem.

The exhibition A Black Flag in a Red City illuminates a chapter in the history of Haifa's Wadi Salib neighborhood, the social implications of which are absent from most of the urban and national "spaces of memory." The exhibition focuses on the voices of the residents of Wadi Salib in the second half of the twentieth century, reflecting a personal and collective memory of urban history written "from below." Using exclusively visual means, the exhibition presents experiences of marginality, injustice, and exclusion, alongside the development of a diverse and lively social fabric. This reality fostered processes of social organization and resistance, climaxing in the protests of July 1959.

Maja Gratzfeld came from Germany to Israel as part of a student exchange program with the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. In Jerusalem she met her partner, and together they decided to start a family in Haifa. During the COVID-19 period, Gratzfeld found herself with a newborn baby, in a new country, struggling to get by in a foreign language. With movement restricted to a 500-meter radius of her home under the lockdown regulations, in a nearby park she met a few elderly women, nannies aged fifty to seventy who make their livings taking care of other people's children, and they became her community. It was no coincidence that Gratzfeld met them in a public park in Haifa's Carmel area, whose population is typically of a high socio-economic ranking that can afford such service.

Curator: Yifat Ashkenazi