In her current exhibition, Devora Morag presents a site-specific installation that is constructed and transformed over the course of six weeks. Its point of origin is a multi-year accumulation of wood scraps, earlier works, and furniture parts gathered from the public arena and kept in the studio. Some have been cast out from homes, others are remnants of unrealized ideas and works. Out of this ever-growing reservoir, Morag creates a material environment in a constant process of assembly, disassembly, and becoming.

The act of collecting is at the heart of Morag’s artistic deed. The objects she collects carry traces of other lives. They have come to her after being ejected from other spheres of use, and now they gain another sojourn in the world. In the studio, they join the pool of materials that have accumulated over the years, awaiting their turn.

Morag does not present the installation as a finished work; it is a process in constant motion. During the exhibition, Morag continues to work in the space, adding, taking away, moving, reassembling. What is visible at any given moment is a transient manifestation of a whole in the process of becoming. The viewer does not encounter a final outcome but a fleeting moment within a broader move.

In addition to materials gathered over a long time, the installation also features remnants from Morag’s own art. Earlier works, ideas that haven’t come to fruition, and unrealized projects join the traces from other lives. The exhibition brings together what others have abandoned and what remains open, suspended, or unrealized in Morag’s work. The materials comprising the installation are somewhat similar to what the sea leaves on the shore: objects cut off from their original

context, their trails lost. They bear various histories, but have not yet ceased to exist. The work does not seek to reinstate them to their original place, but allows them to keep moving – between one home and another, between what they used to be and what they may yet become.

Morag’s installation is a gesture to Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau – an ongoing work constructed at his house between the years 1920 and 1936. The Merzbau is a series of geometric structures containing artworks and objects that had carried autobiographic and commemorative meaning for Schwitters. The installation is not built according to a specific plan, but rather is shaped from the act of gathering and assembling, and the search itself. Like Schwitters’ work, it also remains open to change. However, while historical circumstances have severed his life’s project, Morag acts from an awareness of the temporality of the process and the moment when it will be completed.

The conclusion of the exhibition flows not from completion of the artistic move but from the time frame set for it in advance. On the last day, the audience is encouraged to take parts of the installation and adopt them. The materials gathered, assembled, and displayed together throughout the exhibition will be transformed once more.

*In Morag’s last solo exhibition at Art Space (curator: Yair Barak), the artist handed out the objects (boat-like sculptures) to audience members on the last day of the exhibition.