שנה טובה

This artwork uses traditional New Year's greeting cards as a mail medium to explore the boundaries between private and public. It deals with the quest for love and acceptance, to be an individual yet part of the the crowd. It is also a request of the work itself to be acknowledged as both a personal communicate and an art piece.

Starting at the year 5768 to the Jewish calendar, for each Jewish New Year a set of greeting cards is created. The visual side of each card has its unique image selected individually for the addressee from an earlier created set of images. The images for each year allude to a well known contemporary video art piece. A 'recreation' of the artwork is made, importing some pivotal aspects of the reference piece and adapting them to the artist's world and the holiday spirit. Human images are replaced with the artist's bare body. Graphical elements are replaced with traditional holiday blessings. Severity replaced with joy. On its opposite side, the card holds a message handwritten in ink, an address and postage. The text is a personal greeting, written with the image of the recipient in mind, reflecting degrees of personal relationship as it is ranging from a few words to an extended manifest. The greeting cards are then sent as postcards, open to view by anyone handling the mail, to addressees at destinations around the globe.

The video art based image sends the viewer to a known art piece, insinuating that this greeting card is more than a blessing, it is art. By being a single frame from a video it also insinuates the presence of more frames in the work. As holiday greeting cards are traditionally being sent to a group of friends - the receivers form a collective of which they might not know the members of or even wish to be part of. The group as an ensemble has a hold of the full 'video' forming the entirety of the work.

This group represents the crowd, the society in which the artist lives and works. It includes friends and acquaintances, family and coworkers, artists and scientists. Close or distant they are all handed a greeting card with personal words and an intimate picture. They are exposed not only to personal introspection but also to the sender's physical exposure. Together, the artist's mail creation challenges them to accept him and his work. The artwork does not end with the sent cards. As a communication process it continues through the receivers reactions. While some ask not to receive any more mail, others request more revealing cards for the next year, expecting the work to continue. Some may display the card on their walls while others hide the cards deep in a drawer or throw it to the trash.

The following artworks were referenced to in the last greeting cards:
2008 - Zhang Huan's Family Tree.
2009 - Sigalit Landau's DeadSee.
2010 - Francis Alÿs's Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing.
2011 - Patty Chang's In Love.
2012 - Pipiloti Rist's Selbstlos im Lavabad.
2013 - Nam June Paik's Family of Robot.
2014 - William Wegmans's Milk/Floor.
2015 - Eadweard Muybridge's Nude Descending a Staircase.
2016 - Marina Abramovic & Ulay's Rest Energy.
2017 - Bill Viola's The Dreamers.
2018 - Raafat Hattab's untitled.
2019 - Yael Bartana's A Declaration.
2020 - Mona Hatoum's Roadworks.
2022 - Yayoi Kusama's Obliteration Room.