Israel Studies

ABSTRACT:

How do representations of living rooms, domestic artifacts, and family gaze articulate "local home images" in contemporary Israeli art? The article examines comparatively the way artists from different ethnic backgrounds assume the "inside agent" role toward their own cultural identity or the "outside agent" role in the home of the "Other". Both inside and outside have adopted ethnographic or pseudo-ethnographic strategies in the wake of the "ethnographic turn" of contemporary art and visual culture. These comparative perspectives do not converge into one new type of Israeliness. Images of various and different domestic environments offer a conflicted view of what "feeling at home" means, questioning the role of one who produces the "family gaze", the homely image itself, and where and to whom these images are exhibited.