“Family Matter” invites visitors into the typical home of a Jewish family in the city of Tunis, and it is based on the stories, fragmentary memories, actual artifacts, and archival material reflecting the artist’s family heritage and that of the Jewish community of Tunisia. The exhibition’s name was chosen because of its double meaning: the heritage of the community, and within it, the artist’s family; and “matters” – which are the issues, sometimes problematic, deliberated in the private and intimate space of the family, relying on fragments of Bokobza’s biographical memories and his subjective interpretation. The double meaning is reflected in the range of ways of looking at the exhibition, beginning with ethnographic scrutiny of the objects on display and on through the intimate observation of the sleeping family, their embroidered bedclothes hanging on laundry lines, and drying in the sun. The collection of figures and objects in the exhibition’s installations leads visitors on a tour of private and imagined space and exposes intimate moments as well as customs and conventions that reflect and emphasize the uniqueness of the Tunisian community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This uniqueness manifests itself in the intersection of local culture, French Western culture that permeated as a result of Tunisia’s transformation into a client state of France in 1881, and Jewish and Zionist values.

The space in the museum has been divided into rooms according to the plan of a typical home in the community: dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and children’s room. By means of video animation, one or more figures from the family is present in each room in a single moment of an ordinary day. The public space outside the home is reflected in two additional works: One represents a window that looks out onto Muslim public buildings, homes, and a blue sea, and the other presents a tombstone in a Jewish cemetery, from which the voice of the mother interred beneath it emerges, speaking with her beloved son.

Curator: Sharon Laor-Sirak