Artist Hadassa Goldvicht explores in her work the relationship between language as raw material and the body, engaging in the visual and sensory, deconstruction of language and letters, and investigating different forms of reading and writing. Her multi-channel video and sound installation Dot, Dash was created originally for her two person exhibition with the printmaker Ariel Wardi.

Over the past three decades, Ariel Wardi has been using traditional printing techniques long abandoned by the commercial printing industry, creating hundreds of books bound using sand and earth.. Wardi, born in 1929, is one of the last people in Israel to work in traditional printing press methods. Wardi, was a wireless operator on ships carrying illegal immigrants and arms in the 1940s, and is still fluent in Morse code.

In Dot, Dash Wardi reads from his books “Blessed is the Man” (Psalm 1:1-4)”, “ Jonah”, and “Psalm 104” in Morse code, translating the books into Morse code’s binary system in two different ways: First, tapping the letters with his fingers; and second, vocalizing the letters in Morse code. The sounds of the books, broadcasted throughout the different exhibition spaces, preserved the essence of the original printed words. The installation engages in the abstraction and deconstruction of the Hebrew language, the relationship between language and time, and the new options that emerge when encoding language from sounds that become letters, from letters encoded as dots and dashes vocalized as sounds and back again to letters.

Wardi’s tireless search for the “original” in the art of printing, the quintessential act of creating a replica, becomes a manual “hack” and a subversive pursuit of beauty. Goldvicht, whose early work in printmaking evolved into the material abstraction of video and sound, continues her in-depth research on the sensory and material meanings of letters and words, reflected in her current collaboration with Wardi. This joint exhibition connects the disciplines of art and craft, technology and the handmade, and invites viewers to experience a profound encounter with typography and the deconstruction of reading: the letters themselves have become raw material, and with their transformation into binary forms, have turned into sound.

The Private Press in the Small Room

Hadassa Goldvicht and Ariel Wardi

Mamuta Art and Research Center, 13.10-1.12.2023

Curator: Ada Wardi | Artistic and curatorial guidance: Lea Mauas | Production: Naama Mokady | Technical manager: Eitan Haviv | Table construction and woodwork: Daniel Eichenberger and Ayala Shamir | Hebrew Editing: Alma Cohen Wardi | English translation: Tamar Cohen, Judith Appleton | Arabic translation: Anwar Ben Badis | Exhibition space coordinator: Gaya Or-Ner Adani | Graphic design: Ada Wardi

Video Installation - Camera: Hadassa Goldvicht, Yoram Milo; Sound: Binya Reches; Video consulting: Dotan Goldwaser

Print Process Video Documentation - Camera: Ada Wardi; Editing: Naomi Ben David

This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Dina Wardi, Ariel’s wife, who passed away during the preparations for the exhibition.

Thanks to the Israel Ministry of Culture and Sport and to the Jerusalem Municipality for their generous support for this exhibition