Connection | Ron Arad

About the Work and the Creator / Barak Manor & Elinore Soffer

Connection (2011) by Israeli designer and architect Ron Arad is dedicated to the suffering of Ethiopian Jews who left their homes in 1979-1990 for a tormenting journey to Israel. Some 4,000 of them did not survive the ordeal and found their death on the road and in the transition camps on the Sudanese border, where they were victimized as Jews and exposed to famine and epidemics while waiting to emigrate.

Using metal tubes, Arad "draws" a dynamic outline in space whose movement is sometimes harmonious and continuous and sometimes disjointed and disconnected. Connection is made of two huge arms tied together at the basis of the sculpture as well as high above, between heaven and earth. The sculpture’s foundation is shaped like a loop from which metal tubes branch off to curve upwards. They intertwine, wrap around two palm trees, and then reconnect. The homogeneity evident in the tightly bound metal arteries at the foundation is violated in several sections, and in the upper part of the sculpture, the tubes diverge, split and become re-entangled, creating a circular bond with no discernible beginning or end.

The figure 8, repeated both in the lower and upper section of Connection, is an archetypic shape that symbolizes the infinite continuity of natural and historical processes.1 In this sculpture, Arad underscores the continuity of the immigrants’ route and the optimism and promise it embodies. Connection stands for a voyage across different temporal dimensions: the past voyage of the parents’ generation to Israel is rooted in the present lives of their children in Israel and in the future lives of their descendants. Thus, while one chapter of the voyage has ended, another is taking shape.

Arad chose to include two palm trees in his sculpture - an image also evocative of a worldview that ties past and present together. The palm tree and its fruit are ancient symbols associated with the cultures of the Near East, with the Land of Israel and Jewish tradition. The orientalist painters of the 19th century, having arrived from Europe to the Orient, used the palm tree’s iconic image to represent their newly found sense of place.

Painters such as David Roberts (1796-1864), who documented the landscapes of Palestine, Egypt and Syria, used the palm tree in biblical, romantic, and exotic contexts. The encounter between the venerable palm tree and the modern formal outline and contemporary qualities of Connection is a symbolic reaffirmation of the Return-to-Zion vision of the Ethiopian immigrants. Motivated by the longing to realize and preserve their Jewish identity, their march has reached the Promised Land.

The relationship between the sculpture and its architectural environment also echoes the concepts of the continuity and survival of the Jewish people, as it is located between the Cymbalista Synagogue and Jewish Heritage Center and Beit Hatfutsot Museum of the Jewish People. Another building related to the sculpture is the Elias Sourasky Central Library, home of the historical archive of the Ethiopian Jewry as well as a collection of rare books and manuscripts on the subject in Amharic, Tigrinya, and French. The archive is the  rainchild of Ethiopian Jewry scholar Dr. Jacque (Yaakov) Faitlovitch, whose research and diplomatic endeavors played a key role in documenting and saving the Ethiopian Jewish community. Thus, Connection represents a growing tendency of public outdoor sculptures to be integrated in the environmental conditions of their location, be it buildings, plants or bodies of water.

Ron Arad: A Visionary in Design and Art

Born in Tel Aviv in 1951, Ron Arad studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 1971-1973, before moving to London where he graduated in the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). His teachers in that prestigious school included Bernard Tschumi and Peter Cook (one of the main proponents of utopian architecture). Among his fellow students were Nigel Coates and Zaha Hadid. In 1981, Arad co-founded One Off - studio, workshop, and exhibition space - together with Caroline Thorman. The metalwork, crude amorphous, curvilinear shapes, and the reflective surfaces seen in Connection characterize most of Arad’s works, including Evergreen! (2003), an outdoor sculpture combined with vegetation in Tokyo, and Ripple Chair (2005).

As the years passed, Arad came to be identified with "design art". "For nearly three decades, Arad has countered the traditional separation of the roles of architect, designer, and artist. Prominent in art and design communities while keeping a foot in industrial mass production, he has inspired a new generation of designers in many fields to adopt hybrid practices that have the flexibility to match today’s shifts in design applications. His work has been imitated, idolized, feverishly discussed, and criticized, but never ignored".