In her works, Hadar Saifan functions as a soldier: she spots aircraft, clears routes, patrols evacuated settlements, and shoots with her camera. The invasion of Israel in October 2023 reinforced the role of civilians in protecting their homes—people who felt they had been abandoned by the state and chose to fill the vacuum left by the official institutions themselves.
The central video piece in the exhibition, High Alert, consists of photographs taken between January 2021 and May 2023 around Saifan's house on the confrontation line near Israel's northern border. She is in a constant state of alertness as a spotter, lying in wait for aircraft flying in the skies of the Galilee, following them and trying to capture the objects flying quickly by her house on camera. The IDF's training area borders the fence of the civilian settlement, and the military presence reaches the threshold of her home, disrupting the peace, calling attention to the evil lurking in the north. The clear sky fills with aircraft at an increasing rate, the noise of engines pierces the silence, and clouds of dust billow over the calm landscape of the country's north. The Western Galilee is depicted in Saifan's work as a desolate place, where active military activity bustles against magnificent landscapes.
The military preparedness so conspicuous in Saifan's work failed on October 7th, when all the settlements mentioned in it were evacuated. To execute the works shown in the adjacent gallery, all of which were created after October 2023, Saifan patrolled around the evacuated and non-evacuated northern settlements that were left to absorb the fire on the confrontation line, driven by love and concern. In the Galilee and along the northern border shown in her works, fear and beauty merge with an unceasing anxiety about an imminent war and a clinging to life.
Hadar Saifan
1985, Kibbutz Dafna; lives on the confrontation line
The works are courtesy of the artist
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