Don’t leave home unless necessary for food or medicine shopping. Don’t go to parks, swimming pools, libraries, museums, the beach, or other public spaces. Walk your dog on your own, no further than 100 meters from your house. Don’t go to the gym and other physical or cultural activities. Maintain social relations from afar, don’t host people in your house, and keep a two-meter distance from others outside your household. Use delivery services for shopping. Don’t use public transport. Don’t go to work; work from home using video conferences and calls. Postpone any unnecessary dental treatments until further notice. Don’t go to the doctor; use remote clinic services. Avoid any physical contact, including hugs and handshakes. Don’t open doors with the palm of your hand. Avoid touching your face. Wash your hands frequently. Ventilate your house. Disinfect doors and handles. Avoid kissing the mezuzah and other religious articles. Avoid smoking cigarettes of any kind. Avoid sharing dinnerwear and cutlery. Maintain healthy nutrition and physical activity while staying at home.

These new rules have been slowly applied to everyone, everywhere; for the first time in ages - money, social status, religion, race, or geography just don’t matter. No one is safe. There is no way to avoid the plague. In the interconnected, global, and abundant world of FOMO we are all sentenced to isolation. No more filling your calendar with after-work activities, social encounters, cultural activities, and romantic dates. It’s just you. On your own.

What happens to intimacy in this new reality? While in the pre-coronavirus world we used to criticize technology and smartphones as phenomena that isolate us from our surroundings, today these are crucial tools for creating intimacy. When the most human thing to do is staying away from other humans, we feel like going back to an ancient civilization, but we stay alive thanks to the infamous technology. Can this new order be applied to the art world? Can we connect with an artwork without facing it in reality? Can it move us, touch us, from afar? What happens to the experience of consuming art virtually in an interactive, immersive, and isolated art scene? Participating artists in the exhibition investigate their personal interpretation of intimacy, while the curators wish to explore its impact on the observer through the screen.

Curators: Inbal Sinai and Dalit Steinbrecher Participating artists: Alla Sorokina, Anastasya Chernyak, Arava Assaf, Cooike Moon, Déborah Kempczynski, Diana Toloza, Fabienne Forel, Enes Guc, Itzik Mor, Julian Ochoa, Luis Preto, Marta Wlusek, Michael Liani, Natalia Evelyn Bencicova, Natalie Feldesman, Noa Macabbi, Maya Agam, Orly Anan, Romy Engel, Shay Ben Ari, Shira Kela, Urizen Freaza, Vegetal Import Festival (Giulia Currà + Steve Piccolo), Yuval Atzili, Zaida Kersten. User experience and Website design: Dalit Steinbrecher Website development: Ben Lapid Texts: Inbal Sinai