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The Ten Commandments of the Shomer HaTzair Youth Movement Following Shraga Weil

The Ten Commandments of the Shomer HaTzair Youth Movement Following Shraga Weil - Installation view at the Israeli Center for digital art, Holon, Israel.

In the gallery space, one may see the wall painting outlines, initially created in 1946 by Weil, with a coloured circle that disrupts the image and poses questions regarding the nature of these ten commandments and the relevancy of this youth movement in contemporary times. This links wall art and the local narrative, weaving a tale about and with the locals who live there.

The Ten Commandments of the Shomer HaTzair Youth Movement Following Shraga Weil - Mural documentation.
Tati tracks the Ten Commandments of the movement, first drafted in 1916 and graphically designed by Shraga Weil in 1946. These commandments paint a portrait of the model movement member (the Shomer) with such phrases as “the Shomer strives for Zionism, socialism, and peace among nations.” Weil’s design is full of pathos, with the commandments accompanied by wood carvings of characters wearing official Shomer uniforms standing against the sun that rises from the lyrics to the movement’s anthem. Tati takes these original designs, blows them up, and sprays them over the walls of the local branch, with the characters being replaced by a large, opaque, yellow stain.

The Ten Commandments of the Shomer HaTzair Youth Movement Following Shraga Weil - Installation view Moby Museum of Bat-Yam, Israel.
Tati and Tali Tamir invited the local branch instructors to participate in the “Schooling” (Bristolim) exhibition at the Bat Yam Museum.The exhibition dealt with educational processes, societal mechanisms, and other ways the world of young citizens is being formed, focusing on the educational establishment, teacher-student relationship, and the relationship between students and the classroom spaces in which they spend most of their time.  After their own home was turned into an artwork, the instructors entered Tati’s professional home in order to spray-paint their movement’s ten commandments on the museum’s walls—this time without interfering with their original design

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