Lake of Void: A New Video Work by Yehudit Sasportas

*Entrance to the exhibition is included in the museum entrance ticket*

The Tower of David Jerusalem Museum is proud to host Yehudit Sasportas, one of Israel’s highly regarded and internationally recognized artists, as part of the Jerusalem Biennale, with a new video work being presented here at the museum for the first time.

“Lake of Void,” a new and unique video work, explores buried memories and the collective unconscious, and the way physical places can carry a geographic, political, or emotional charge that remains long after the events that created it have ended.

The work consists of a series of clay mines, each containing an internal code consisting of seismographic lines drawn by hand, inspired by recordings of more than 138 trees in the Black Forest in Germany, near the cabin where the philosopher Martin Heidegger lived and the presumed location where, in 1967, the charged and unresolved encounter between him and the poet Paul Celan took place.

The trees, silent witnesses to an event known only to a few become, in Sasportas’s hands, a “living archive.” Their sounds were recorded using needles and pencils on sheets of drawing paper, which were rolled up and sealed inside black metal boxes, each of which was placed inside a mine. A Hebrew letter engraved at the base of each mine connects with the other letters to form words, verses, and sentences charged with meaning.

The mines were transported by fishing boat and thrown by Sasportas into Lake Bant in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. The lake that served as a cover story and camouflage for an underground bunker from the period of the Third Reich. The video work follows their fall into the water and their remaining there for an unknown period of time.

Despite their form, the clay sculptures are neither explosives nor active mines. The Hebrew letters embedded in their surfaces transform the mine from an object of danger and destruction into poetry as a force containing the possibility of healing and repair. Resting on top of the submerged bunker, they create a permanent underwater installation entitled “Lake of Void.”

The video and sound installation, which will be presented for the first time at this year’s Jerusalem Biennale, continues Sasportas’s ongoing exploration of the archaeology of the unconscious, trauma, and the possibility of change, healing, and repair.

Curator: Hillie Wurtman Moyal

You are invited to the exhibition opening on Monday, October 12, 2026, at the Tower of David
5:00pm Reception
5:30pm Greetings
6:00pm Open tour of the exhibition
**Admission is free; advance registration is required.