Bag Composition 6 (#7)

I can't believe you remembered Erik! I am interested if CaliAnn already knew than or if this was an interpretation of the piece. If so, wow! I am touched!!!

I am so happy you folks like this one. I should have shot details of it, as there is a lot of collage in it. Lots of paper street trash, receipts, matchbooks, rocks, bangs within bags, some children's homework, a smooshed Coke can with a straw...so many things. I got all of these items from a group that took a one-month trip to Israel to help scope out the venue for the Jerusalem Biennial. I had no idea what I was going to do with it all.

The writing on it is part of a poem written by Israel's most famous poet, Yehuda Amichai, called "Tourists." It's written in both English and Hebrew on the bag and it goes:

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.
 
Thank you Ayin for printing that poem for me. I hadn't seen this piece before and didn't know anything about it. It was actually my husband who saw the wailing wall. He was glancing over my shoulder when I was looking at the piece, and in a blink of an eye, he said it's the wailing wall. He's been to Jerusalem and the wall, and recognized it instantly.
 
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