This exhibition brings together artists’ books by Andi Arnovitz (Israel), Lynne Avadenka (USA), and Mirta Kupferminc (Argentina). Its centerpiece is a new collaborative book created during lockdown. Employing a shared repertoire of images developed through virtual communication, each artist worked alone in her studio, addressing collective experiences of loss and isolation. The resulting book explores reconceived notions of private, civic, and global space as they are refracted through the medium of books, and inspired by “four cubits,” the Jewish concept of personal space. The book’s imagery subsequently served as the basis for a work of video art.
Books are thresholds to unfamiliar worlds and can serve as bridges connecting diverse communities. Even before the age of printing, codices connected people in far-flung locations. Codices and books were crucial means of communication, and books persist as vehicles for exchanging information, ideas, stories, and emotions across time and space. They serve as platforms for collaboration between authors and readers, writers and their translators, and the creators of texts and images. During the pandemic, when many people were deprived of physical contact, an understanding of books as intimate and haptic objects with the power to open-up vast universes, encompassing both proximity and distance, has resonated in new ways.
Arnovitz, Avadenka, and Kupferminc share an interest in expanding the boundaries of a book’s composition, to arrive at an appropriate marriage of form and content. Their works often represent dialogues across time and between cultures, and focus on Jewish subjects, on memory, and on women’s stories.

Jerusalem Print Workshop | 38 Shivtei Isreal St. (HaNeviim corner), Jerusalem | Opening Hours: Sun – Thu: 8:00 – 15:00, Fri – By appointment