Ilana Hoffmann: Hashavat Aveida

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“Aveida” – the Hebrew word for loss – meets Ilana Hoffmann at every corner of her Jerusalem neighborhood. “Hashavat Aveida” (returning a lost object) notices are scattered throughout the neighborhood, tacked onto poles, walls, and bus stops. Every notice tells its own story, a story of something lost by its owner, which found its way into the hands of a stranger wishing to perform a mitzvah and return it.

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Hoffmann collects these notices from the street, and at times, even documents them with her camera, gathering the stories they hold. Her attempt to bring meaning and aesthetic order to them echoes the search interwoven into Hoffmann’s life after her own personal loss – a search that led her to formulate an artistic language that will allow her to articulate the void and meaning that loss left in her life. 

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Hoffmann explores questions of social limitations and boundaries, as well as those she imposes on herself. In her artistic practice, she asks which of our actions are the product of acceptable codes of conduct – of a commitment to faith, religion, social norms, and the various circles within which we operate – and which stem from a personal set of values.

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Hoffmann’s curiosity and actions trace the customs of the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) street (among others), touching on themes such as “Hashavat Aveida.” This mitzvah is both a positive commandment (mitzvat aseh) between individuals – “thou shalt surely bring it back to him again” (Exodus 23:4) and a negative commandment (mitzvat lo ta’aseh) – “thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray” (Deuteronomy 22:1). Thus, this chance encounter between a misplaced object and the stranger who finds it intertwines the life stories of people connected only by this object, by the Aveida. At times, these are trifling items of no emotional significance, like a “Chinese yo-yo” or a “Rav-Kav” transit card. But sometimes, they are treasured personal possessions that carry deep emotional meaning for their owners, perhaps passed down through generations, a cherished gift from a loved one, or an irreplaceable, unique item. Hoffmann traces these stories and mysteries embedded within the notices. She is drawn to their aesthetics, their conventions and the clues they carry, the signs they form in the street and those they require the owner to provide in order to reclaim the lost object.

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Some of the notices have clearly been in the same spot for a long time, bearing the signs of the passage of time: the writing is smeared and running after the heavy Jerusalem rain, the colors faded in the blazing sun. Who knows if in the meantime the finder earned a mitzvah and the object returned to its owner, bringing the story to a close, or perhaps, unfortunately, the owner of the object did not see the notice, and it is lying around in the finder’s home like a useless object.

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Curator: Ma’ayan Israeli