Ron Arad in the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition Royal Academy of Arts, London 18 June – 18 August 2024
Placed on chairs, against the backdrop of a custom-made rug, a cello, two violins and a viola play fragments of music seemingly of their own accord. With no instrumentalists present, the sounds are produced not by speakers within the instruments, as one might expect, but by the vibrations of the instruments’ bodies themselves.
The sounds emanating from them range from improvisations by contemporary musicians to musical fragments found in the archive of the Florentine Ghetto, sourced by The Medici Archive Project. Woven into the rug are passages of musical notation alongside trompe-l’œil shadows of the instruments and their chairs.
Lihi Turjeman Right-to-left Top-to-bottom at the 2024 Venice Biennale
I confini dell’alterità The contours of otherness, Jewish Musuem of Venice April 21-Oct 27th 2025
Lihi Turjeman’s painting Right-to-left Top-to-bottom draws connections between the historic Florentine Jewish Ghetto and present-day ghettoized communities. The piece engages with the remaining epigraphic fragments from the ghetto’s synagogues, incorporating inscriptions from the Hebrew Bible to highlight the fractures within these stone remnants. By focusing on these divine yet fragmented words, Turjeman reflects on the forgotten memory of the Jewish ghetto and the broader Jewish experience of exile and displacement. The linear title contrasts with the artwork’s exploration of non-linear time, while the strip, composed of alternating black and white squares reminiscent of archaeological rulers, underscores themes of measurement and transformation. This element ties the painting to its archaeological origins, symbolizing a renewed phase in its historical journey. The work was displayed at the Jewish Musuem Venice during the 2024 Biennale.
Ghetto Redux
Ghetto Redux is an ongoing multi-disciplinary project, commissioned by Shifting Vision in partnership with the Medici Archive Project.
The Florentine Ghetto was built by the Medici family in the 16th century, with the Medici maintaining control over the rent, trade and governance of its inhabitants until the 18th century. The ghetto was demolished in the 19th century following Italian unification. The Jewish History Programme at the Medici Archive Project was established in 2013 to research, archive, and publish documentation about early modern Jews and Jewish culture in the Medici archives. Much of this material has been the foundation of the exhibition at the Palazzo Pitti on the Jewish Ghetto in Florence. The name of every resident, the blueprint of every apartment, the professional activities that went on inside and outside of its walls, the mapping of Jewish mercantile networks and the art, music, and science produced by its inhabitants over two centuries are all recorded in the archive.
The exhibition, The Jews and The Medici featuring documents and artefacts from the Medici Archive, was staged at the Palazzo Pitti, Florence 23rd October – 28th January 2024.