We Shall Rise, a new immersive art installation designed to take participants into Israeli society’s defining moments of, and since, the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacres, is now set to open to the public.
The installation, located on the rooftop of the Azrieli Tel Aviv Mall, held its first viewings on Sunday. It features a vast range of images spanning from destroyed kibbutzes and wounded Israeli children to pictures of the wars with Iran and returned hostages embracing their loved ones.
“In the last two and a half years, I've been documenting intensively, from the morning of October 7 (2023), until the last days, everything that happened in Israel during this period of time,” photographer Ziv Koren told The Jerusalem Post at the event.
Koren is the photographer behind the images used in the installation. His work, enhanced by the design firm DISKIN, provides the visuals for the ten different projections throughout the 500-square-meter space.
“People think that when you're holding a camera in front of your face, it blocks you from feeling towards the subject that you're photographing, and it's totally the opposite,” he continued. “My goal in my photography is to make people feel something, and to go through some kind of emotional experience while viewing the image. And this doesn’t pass me by as it goes from my subject to the viewer. It really goes through me. So, it's probably been the hardest documentation (experience) I've had throughout the years.”
The text used for the narration accompanying Koren’s images was provided by writer and poet Noam Horev.
Also speaking to the Post at the opening event, Horev tied the personal experiences he’s had since the start of the war with the national experience as the impetus of the project.
“We've been through a really tough and hard three years, and we wanted to find some hope, some optimism,” he said. “I became a parent in the year when the October (war) started, and I wanted to give my child a bright future. We've been through so much. My partner went into miluim (IDF reserves service) for a long, long time, and I stayed home alone. So writing was the place I ran to. I felt a responsibility to write, to describe, and to capture the feelings, the significant moments that not only I went through, but that we went through as a nation.”
Horev also alluded to the project as an act of resistance against those who want to see Israel destroyed.
“We wanted to show that no matter what, no matter how they try to kill us and to make us vanish, we're still here,” Horev explained. “Really, this nation has a strength and endless power to continue. We really wanted people to come out, to be proud of being Israeli, and to remember that we're strong, and we're even stronger when we're together.”
In addition to being housed at the Azrieli Tel-Aviv mall, the We Shall Rise installation received warm support from the Azrieli Group at the launch event, and Azrieli Group CEO Danna Azrieli was present.
Azrieli told the Post that it was important to her company to create a platform for the installation because it offered Israelis another way to find healing.
“Everyone here went through something,” she said. “And the goal is that through these moments (depicted in the installation), each of us can find ourselves in ways that we've all experienced. And that way we can all find our way toward a sense of rising up, going forward, and healing.”
Azrieli also said that the placement of the installation at the mall, which is connected to the Tel-Aviv Hashalom train station, has parking access and bus stops, and is in a centrally-located Israeli city, was a deliberate measure to enable easy access for the public.