Hora 2024-2025

Drawing on paper / Series of four drawings

“Only in dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest things.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

After an archival photograph of a group of teenagers dancing the Hora in front of the Poulouzat orphanage.
Date: c. 1945. Location: Poulouzat, Haute-Vienne, France / Photo source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Herbert & Vera Karliner
Pencil on paper / 50 × 70 cm

In the series Hora, I explore the symbolism of the circle dance as an expression of community, tradition, and identity. The works are based on archival photographs from the 1940s and 1950s depicting dance scenes from harvest festivals and the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in France, Germany, and Israel. These celebrations connected agricultural cycles with national narratives and reflected both cultural rootedness and its transformation through migration.

I translated these historical photographs into a series of drawings, using a consistent technique to create a temporal and atmospheric connection between the images. By abstracting the motifs and placing them in a new context, I examine how rituals create a sense of community while also carrying political and ideological meanings.

After an archival photograph of the Harvest Festival in Kovahl-Neestahl, 1955. Ribbon dance around the harvest crown on the festival grounds. / Photo: Kraemer
Pencil on paper / 50 × 70 cm

 After archival material: Folk dance group at the Shavuot festival in Kibbutz Dalia, 01/05/1945.
Drawing on paper, each 50 × 70 cm.

Exhibition view: Burggalerie, Halle, 2025. Photo: Michel Klehm.

After archival material: Shavuot celebration at Kibbutz Alonim, 1948. Source: Israel State Archives, Zoltan Kluger Collection.
Pencil on paper / 50 × 70 cm

Exhibition view: Burggalerie, Halle, 2025. Photo: Michel Klehm.