Space for Community Art: Maja Gratzfeld: Manual Labor

Maja Gratzfeld: Manual Labor

Maja Gratzfeld came from Germany to Israel as part of a student exchange program with the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. In Jerusalem she met her partner, and together they decided to start a family in Haifa. During the COVID-19 period, Gratzfeld found herself with a newborn baby, in a new country, struggling to get by in a foreign language. With movement restricted to a 500-meter radius of her home under the lockdown regulations, in a nearby park she met a few elderly women, nannies aged fifty to seventy who make their livings taking care of other people's children, and they became her community. It was no coincidence that Gratzfeld met them in a public park in Haifa's Carmel area, whose population is typically of a high socio-economic ranking that can afford such service. 

The women, who came to Israel from different countries, bring other cultures and languages with them, and the public garden became a meeting place and a common denominator with like women who earn their living taking care of children not their own. Gratzfeld thus found a safe place for herself in the process of becoming a mother.

While in the garden, Gratzfeld changed roles: at times she was an onlooker, sitting on a bench, watching the nannies perform their duties; at other times she took a more active part and interacted with them. In the park, where only women were present, questions arose concerning the integration of cultures, socio-economic status, power relations in Israeli society, politics, family, etc. In the garden setting, the daily routine of caregiving acquired an additional, more functional context, pertaining to the ability to leave the house despite the COVID restrictions and earn money.

On this basis, Gratzfeld initiated a joint work with the women: she photographed them as they performed routine actions, such as changing diapers, recorded them singing lullabies, and asked them to document the park from their points of view. Language became a central theme, allowing for different, varied identities, attesting to the degree of integration in the place, and signifying the preservation of one's culture of origin. The exhibition represents a community that was created under these unique circumstances, at a time of global and local crisis. In this situation, and from a feminist point of view, Gratzfeld delves into the position and status of women in the realms of treatment and care.

Curator: Yifat Ashkenazi