Ilit Azoulay: Mere Things

Mere Things includes selections of work by Azoulay (Israeli, b. 1972; lives and works in Berlin) from 2010 to the present, featuring large scale digital photocollages of archival objects that explore how images and objects transmit knowledge, shape memory, and support or undermine historical narratives. The presentation features a new work that responds to the collections and context of the Jewish Museum, as well as selections from the series Queendom (2022), first presented as part of Azoulay’s solo exhibition for the Israeli Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.

The works on view combine photomontage with sculptural and sound elements to magnify different aspects of object histories and introduce imaginative and speculative frameworks that expose the ways in which objects can embody multiple, shifting meanings. Advancing the Jewish Museum’s vision as a beacon for the Jewish community and a place to explore universal values, the exhibition encourages viewers to recognize one another’s humanity by reconsidering how we perceive each other’s stories.

Initially trained in photography, Azoulay’s research-based practice explores the central role photography plays in archives and the idiosyncracies of institutional systems created to preserve and produce knowledge. As an outgrowth of this practice Azoulay created a new work, Unity Totem (2024), for the exhibition, mining the Jewish Museum’s collection for ritual objects, such as Torah finials, and amulets, mostly created by Jewish communities in various parts of the Arab world, including in the artist’s familial homeland of Morocco.

In the Press
“The exhibit … asks viewers to see each other’s humanity and reconsider how we perceive each other’s stories.”
— The Forward

“The works on display, of course, are not “mere things”; they bear the weight of Jewish memory.”
— Hadassah Magazine