Fine | Meirav Heiman

010 What is the White City?

Opening event: 06.02.2025, Thursday, 19:30
Exhibition dates: 06.02-14.06. 2025

"Fine," the latest video by artist Meirav Heiman, created during wartime, depicts a family meal that spirals out of control and transforms into a chaotic and spectacular display of disaster. A family of four gathers for a fundamental ritual of eating together around the table – a final moment of sanity before things fall apart.

The space where the family meal occurs lacks characteristics of domesticity and habitation. However, viewers watch this collapse seated in the gallery’s “living room” installation. The installation echoes the experience of watching disasters unfold in real-time on screens. It invites visitors to negotiate their engagement with the event and their role as spectators of the "disaster" performance.

The work stretches the boundaries of the "decisive moment," suspending it as a state of ongoing hypnotic and unsettling disaster, a choreography of collapse and survival. Oscillating between routine and disruption, particular and generic, and imaginary and real, Heiman creates a space of vulnerability seeking comfort as the concept of home is eroded.

Video: 04:32 min
Curator: Arch. Sabrina Cegla
Production and setup: Aya Zaiger, Liav Levi
Text editing: Zipa Kempinsky, Stav Axenfeld
English translation: Sivan Raveh
Graphic design: Idit and Anat

Meirav Heiman – “Fine”
Video
Codirector: Shabtai Yitzhak-Eden
Actors: Adi Teper, Yaniv Teper, Or Teper, Ella Teper
Chief cinematographer: Benny Mali
Cinematographers: Alon Balas, Liat Lerner, Doron Peled, Gil Lupo
Art director: Caroline Attoun
Art team: Estina Lavy, Dina Valershtein, Malvina Pollack, Noa Harel
Producer: Olivia Levi Hadid
Gaffer: Shuki Paz
Best boy Yaron Yefet
Grip: Ofer Almog
Editor: Guy Nemesh
Sound designer: Rotem Dror
Musical composition: Flight of the Inner Bird
By: Yehezkel Raz
Vocals: Sivan Talmor
Acrobatics and flying effects: Yaniv Swissa - Y Circus
Still photography: Dima Valershtein, Avi Levin

Special Thanks: Alon and Rochi Heiman, Yossi, Alma and Ori Ben Shoshan, Shahar Marcus, Nirit Dahan, Itay Schiff
Special thanks to Evy Tabachi, Utopia Studios

Bio
Meirav Heiman (1972, Jerusalem) is an interdisciplinary artist (photography, video art, and installation) living and working in Tel Aviv. She graduated with honors with a BA from the Photography Department at Bezalel and is completing her MA in Film. She has won the Creation Encouragement Prize and grants from the Pais Council for Culture and Art, the Independent Creators Fund from the Ministry of Culture, the Work-Team Prize at Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Media Art, Germany, and more.
Heiman has presented solo exhibitions at the Herzliya Museum, Haifa Museum, Noga Gallery in Tel Aviv, Artists' Studios in Tel Aviv, and has participated in group exhibitions at leading institutions in Israel and worldwide - Tel Aviv Museum, Petach Tikva Museum, Israel Museum, Haifa Museum, The Open Museum of Photography, Tel Hai, Janco Dada Museum, Ein Hod, Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, and more. She has also shown video and multimedia works at international festivals and biennials in Israel and worldwide.

“Fine” is the tenth project in the Liebling Haus Project Room. The space encourages creatives of all disciplines to take an active role in a critical investigation of the question, "What is the White City?" as part of alternative, collaborative and ongoing research that approaches the White City as a platform for contemporary discourse on conservation, urbanism, identity and culture in the city. The Project Room is the open end of the permanent exhibition in the Liebling Haus, telling the tale of the White City as a point of departure for a story in the making. It is an opportunity to invite the creative community to address current challenges the city is facing on a local and global scale and present different perspectives and alternative narratives.