Israel’s Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park has reopened to the public for the first time in 25 years to house an exhibition of works by the Italian artist and architect Ivo Bisignano. Entitled “Human Forms,” the show features a suite of never-before-seen works that interact directly with the park’s Southern Cave—a manmade quarry dating back as far as 112 BCE.
Within the cave, Bisignano juxtaposes elements of human and inanimate, and the ancient world with the digital age, in a series of five video projections and seven sculptures. By an act as simple as placing objects within its walls, viewers experience the structure’s unprecedented transformation from an archaeological site into a cavernous museum, where the artist’s sculptures have taken up residence.
Installation view of Ivo Bisignano’s “Human Forms,” on view in the caves at Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park; courtesy of the artist.
“I wanted to install ‘Human Forms’ in the incredible Southern Cave at Beit Guvrin in order to establish a temporary home for the work, but within a historic and archeological context within a historical and archaic context,” said Bisignano. “In this case, the “museum” is the site itself.”
Viewers take in the dichotomy of stillness and movement of light through elements like hand-drawn crows, Pop art references, and animations projected onto the cave’s sloping, limestone walls. The monolithic humanoid pieces have been placed around the space as though they were visitors in the park themselves, created with inspiration from contemporary obsessions surrounding beauty, tears, racial diversity, and body image.
Installation view of Ivo Bisignano’s “Human Forms,” on view in the caves at Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park; courtesy of the artist.
Open through November 1, the show is accompanied by exclusive written narratives from creatives like Yotam Ottolenghi, Sir Peter Cook, Robert C. Morgan, and Binnie A Dansby.
