After a successful group exhibition presented at the Artists House in Tel-Aviv, 'Hshuma' was shown at the MACT/CACT Museum of Contemporary Art in Bellinzona, Switzerland.

Hshuma attempts to examine how contemporary art can express the concept of identity beyond the notion social shame (Hshuma from Moroccan). It addresses the aesthetic discourse in relation to the history of art and explores Identity through the voids, or gaps in the individual’s identity that are generated metaphorically by the notion of shame.

It brings a glance at the socio-political, post-colonial society of the western world, dealing with issues of immigration, social challenges and the artistic representation of it, presenting an important new layer in this ever-evolving conversation about identity and migration.

In socio-political terms, the concept of shame reopens the entire discussion about the definition of identity, which originated, in Israel, fundamentally in a profoundly Ashkenazi historical experience. Indeed, Hshuma is not just another perspective on Israeli contemporary art, but a concept that interpenetrates with the historical and political reality of this country located in the Middle East, yet with strongly European traits. Hshuma is expressed as a consequence of social status and defines an individual’s exceptional, extraordinary, borderline behaviour vis-à-vis society, in interactions between private space and public space, in the areas of sexuality, of rules and of the values central to the dominant culture that manages them.