Radicant Israeli Art: From Past to Future

Mieke Bal&rsquo
s concept of &ldquo
migratory aesthetics&rdquo
and the observation by Saloni Mathur and Anne Ring Peterson that &ldquo
traditional notions of location, origin and authenticity seem obsolete and in urgent need of reconsideration&rdquo
perfectly encompass the phrase &ldquo
Jewish art&rdquo
and within that difficult-to-define subject, Israeli art (which, among other things, is not always &ldquo
Jewish&rdquo
). As Hava Aldouby has noted, Israeli art presents a unique inflection of the global condition of mobility&mdash
which in fact contributes to the problem of easily defining the category of &ldquo
Israeli art&rdquo
Nothing could be more appropriate to the discussion of Israeli art, or to the larger definitional problem of &ldquo
than to explore it through Nicolas Bourriaud&rsquo
s botanical metaphor of the &ldquo
radicant&rdquo
and thus the notion of &ldquo
radicant art&rdquo
The important distinction that Bourriaud offers between radical and radicant plants&mdash
whereby the former type depends upon a central root, deep-seated in a single nourishing soil site, whereas the latter is an &ldquo
organism that grows its roots and adds new ones as it advances&hellip
&rdquo
with &ldquo
&hellip
a multitude of simultaneous or successive enrootings&rdquo
&mdash
is a condition that may be understood for both Israeli and Jewish art, past and present: Aldouby&rsquo
s notion that the image of the Wandering Jew offers the archetypal radicant, informs both the &ldquo
altermodernity&rdquo
concept and Israeli art.