Seeing it for the Trees
A large body of work including: performative lecture, artist book, single channel video, and custom wallpaper, 2023.
Description
Seeing it for the Trees critically examines the role of forests in the formation and maintenance of Zionism as a settler-colonial project. It presents archival photographs from the Keren Kayemet L’Israel - Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), alongside personal images, to understand the role of trees in Israel’s ethnonationalist statehood. Many forests planted by the KKL-JNF were strategically located over the ruins of Palestinian villages to prevent native Palestinian residents from returning, and to cover over traces of prior inhabitation. Central to the project is a computational bot the artist wrote to “scrape” or download the 50,000+ images of the KKL-JNF photo archive from the Internet, and text herself one image per hour for over a year. Seeing it for the Trees focuses on how the interruptive quality of a bot can challenge the ideological frameworks upon which one was raised — what a close reading of images can untangle about land, ecology, and nationalism.
Seeing it for the Trees — Performative Lecture, 2023
First commissioned for the exhibition “Material / Inheritance” at the Jewish Museum of Maryland (March 2023), this performative lecture critically examines the role of forests in the formation and maintenance of Zionism. Instead of using a central screen, this performative lecture uses live computer code to text images to the phones of audience members during the event.
Seeing it for the Trees — Artist Book, 2023
The artist book version of Seeing it for the Trees documents Berdugo’s perfomative lecture, developed with the archival images from the KKL-JNF. Alongside personal images, the work asks: what does it look like — and feel like — be anti-Zionist and still be Israeli? What does it mean to grapple with family legacies of politics, place, and homeland? And, how do questions of family histories become more urgent upon becoming a parent?
Acquired by the collections of CalArts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and Northeastern, among others.
Seeing it for the Trees — video, 2023
In part one of the video version of Seeing it for the Trees, the artist is compelled by her own experience planting a tree in the Jerusalem forest as a child to unpack the legacy of Zionism as a settler-colonial project that she no longer agrees with as an adult. Framed by conversations with her Moroccan-Israeli father are also existential questions about making art as a parent, herself, and what kind of legacy she is passing on to her own son. The work draws its footage from archival photographs and propaganda videos created by the Keren Kayemet L’Israel - Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), alongside a mix of vernacular YouTube sources. This video work is but one section of a much larger video project, currently under development.
Exhibitions, Performances, and Screenings
“Art+Process+Ideas: Liat Berdugo, Heesoo Kwon, Ranu Mukherjee,” Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA. Sep 19 - Dec 3, 2023.
“Material/Inheritance”, Jewish Museum Maryland, Baltimore, MD. Mar 26 - Jun 11, 2023.
Selected Press
Ayin Press | Hyperallergic | Disloyal
Credits and collaborators
This work was funded in part through the 2023 Art + Process + Ideas Artist Residency at Mills College at Northeastern University, as well as the 2022-23 New Jewish Culture Fellowship. Technical expertise from Robert Ochshorn and Charlie Macquarie, and book design by Nicole Lavelle.
Performance documentation from Seeing it for the Trees at the Jewish Museum of Maryland as part of the exhibition, “Material / Inheritance,” 2023 (photo by Sid Keiser)
Custom wallpaper featuring 22,000+ images from the KKL-JNF image archive waits to be installed in the Mills College Art Museum, 2023.
Video stills from Seeing if for the Trees, Part I, 2023
