Janco-Dada Museum: Event Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Death of Artist Honi Ha’Ma’agel

An event marking the tenth anniversary of the death of artist Honi Ha’Ma’agel is organized by the Janco-Dada Museum in collaboration with the "Smartut" (Rag) theater group. Founded by Honi Ha’Ma’agel in the 1970s, the group performed dozens of performance art pieces across the country at various festivals and cultural events.

Honi was considered a multidisciplinary artist who experimented with a wide range of genres and artistic worlds, including cinema, performance art, and directing, and was particularly identified with the Dada movement. He often blurred his biographical details but was known to have come from an ultra-Orthodox family. In the 1980s, he founded the avant-garde group "Smartut," the Chelouche Gallery, and the Shelter for Contemporary Art in Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv. Over the years, he worked within the framework of the Janco-Dada Museum. In the 1990s, he initiated the establishment of the Performance Artists Association to promote interdisciplinary art. Throughout his life, Honi was behind numerous films, plays, books, shows, and performance pieces.

Since the Janco-Dada Museum is dedicated to this field, the museum co-produced many projects with him over three decades, both within the museum and across the country. These included: "Wake Up Little Susie" (1993); "The Baptism/Cold Shower" (1996); "A Light unto the Nations" (2000); "40 Years of Victory" (2007); "Street Language" (2010); "The End" (2012); and his final exhibition, "Victim of Stunted Development" (2016), in which he placed his headstone and grave stones in the display space—under which he was buried about two months after the exhibition closed.

Currently, the museum is hosting an exhibition featuring a selection of Honi's works from the "Street Language" project, which were displayed throughout the country in 2010.

The event program includes: Excerpts from the play HAMLAET by the "Smartut" group (Gibson Bar-El and Yarden Gilboa); heartfelt words from family and friends; a song by Hezi Shohat (founding generation of "Smartut"); Raya Zomer-Tal with a presentation about Honi; and Dr. Yigal Bin-Nun addressing the big question: How did Honi redefine art? Plus more unexpected surprises in the best tradition of Honi...

The event also marks the upcoming retirement of Raya Zomer-Tal, Director and Chief Curator of the museum, who curated all of Honi's exhibitions and co-produced the joint projects with him.

Janco-Dada Museum,

Ein Hod Artists’ Village,

P.B. Hof HaCarmel 30890.

Tel: 04-9842350

https://www.jancodada.co.il/

(Photo: Hamlet. Photography: Dan Ben Ari)