Exhibitions

Moran Kliger is the eighth recipient of the Ann and Ari Rosenblatt Prize for Visual Art, an award that recognizes the research-based, visual and conceptual dimensions of an artist’s practice. Her current exhibition continues this trajectory, inviting viewers to encounter the complex dialogue she weaves between struggle and acceptance, between a past that disintegrates and a present still in formation.
The exhibition centers on the myth of the “look back”, engaging with the biblical figure of Lot’s wife from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. Though the Bible grants her only a single six-word verse, her story endures in cultural and religious consciousness, continuing to inspire reflection on movement and memory, progress and stillness, and the tension between forward and backward gaze.
Between the mythic framework and the fading image stands Lot’s wife, not as a pillar of salt but as a reverberating mirror posing questions about human and feminine perception alike. Frozen in time not as punishment for curiosity but as a silent monument to the impossibility of stepping into the future without looking back at what was. Her gaze marks a boundary, a threshold between a world destroyed and one yet to be shaped.
Her face turned toward the burning Sodom is not merely an expression of longing but perhaps a lament for a vanishing world. Like the fabled apple of Sodom, gleaming on the outside yet crumbling to ash at the touch, so too the memory she carries, luminous and potent yet impossible to grasp. She folds inward, a figure caught between ruin and redemption. Frozen in her inner struggle, she becomes a mirror to our own divided selves, suspended between surrender to the past and the yearning to face forward.
At the center of the exhibition stands a drawing installation composed of seven double-sided works, inviting viewers to wander among them, a spatial echo of the journey and passage central to the biblical tale. The works employ diverse techniques such as inkjet print, oil and charcoal, lending each drawing both density and diffusion. Some are figurative, others abstract, all process-based and time-bound. The biblical moment is not recreated but suspended, a threshold in which fruit turns to ash, an eagle’s wing stretches between flight and fall, a ram caught in the thicket, signs of sacrifice and impasse.
The presence of Lot’s wife invites reflection on the ongoing tension between preservation and destruction. Is the backward glance always a sign of weakness, or might it be a condition for growth? Just as the expulsion from Eden was not merely a punishment but a formative act of awakening, her gaze, both condemned and illuminating, reveals how every look back, whether nostalgic, critical or political, reshapes the reality we inhabit. It offers a feminine perspective on loss, portraying her as the tragic heroine who paid the price of wisdom and curiosity, choosing to see rather than obey blindly.
In becoming a pillar of salt she gained control over the gaze and the narrative of her own life. In choosing understanding she became the myth’s wise and independent victim. Like the biblical eagle carrying the Israelites on its wings, she offers an alternative image of bearing, not the soaring forward but the weight of memory carried upon our shoulders. She does not ascend but remains caught within an inner thicket of images and feelings, and there her tragic depth is revealed.
Kliger’s works are grounded in hybridity and transformation, deconstructing reality into elements and recombining them into new worlds. They invite engagement with familiar visual concepts displaced from their original context, raising questions about the power of reality and its influence on structure and order, positioning the viewer at the threshold between ruin, hope and renewed creation.