Tamar Meshulam’s ceramic work, ‘Balata, Jaffa Extrude’, is to be added to the Knesset’s permanent art collection

On the 5^th Iyar 1948, as the UN vote for the establishment of the State of Israel was passed, Lucien Harris proudly raised the Israel flag atop the Jewish Agency building at 77 Great Russell Street, London. His son, David Zohar, 7-years-old at the time, recalls:

 “Everyone was singing Hatikva in the rain, and someone opened a bottle of wine for the Shecheyanu blessing. All the grown-ups around me were crying with joy.”

The Harris family sold their Golder's Green house and arrived in Israel wearing warm winter clothes in October that year, to a hamsin wind and temperature of 36 degrees centigrade.

Sixty-five years later, the Knesset has chosen Lucien Harris’s granddaughter's ceramic work “Balata, Jaffa Extrude” to add to its permanent art collection. In this work, Tamar Meshulam, a product designer, has taken colored floor tiles and raised color strips to create a 3D silhouette of an entire city.

Tamar is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Industrial Design and while she was studying for her Master's degree at Eindhoven Academy in Holland, she won the UNESCO Grand prize for her game, Master Peace for Dialogue.  As we well know, current conflict resolution most often place protagonists in a win-lose situation. Tamar's game is based on collaborative face-to-face interaction for participants in order to jointly create a new narrative. This is a useful tool for intercultural dialogue and an important precursor for more successful conflict resolution.

Tamar's art is rooted in her surroundings. Whenever I walk along the Jerusalem Light Rail Park track, I make sure to visit Tamar's “Green Seat” sculpture in the community garden of Ma'agalei Yavne Street in Katamon. 

One Friday evening we saw young mothers with their children enjoying a relaxing moment on the bench which was constructed with the local residents and integrated into the surrounding vegetation. Tamar's “Cool Seat”, based on the Arab ceramic water jug that cools by slow evaporation of water through its pores, recently won a commendation in a South Korean biannual competition.