Current Exhibition: Tamar Nissim | Contagious Truths

Tamar Nissim’s videos, photographs, and objects explore how Western hygiene methods were interwoven with nationalist ideology to control women in mid-twentieth-century Israel. Nissim’s videos draw from personal interviews, archival research, and testimonies to trace the effects of these policies on women’s bodies and lives: Mizrahi immigrants who complied to prove themselves civilized; nurses who enforced strict hygiene protocols; mothers whose babies were taken away in what has come to be known as the Yemenite, Mizrahi, and Balkan Children Affair.

Glass bottles, bars of olive oil soap, and photographs of cleaning products extend the context of the videos, calling forth Nissim’s mother’s immaculate living room. Pairing audio of herself and her mother with footage of her daughter, Nissim forms a generational portrait. Unflinchingly, she confronts the legacy of trauma, how it remains in the body, and its possible ends.