Artis, in collaboration with The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, presented “The Nation’s Groves,” an artist talk with Jerusalem-born artist Dor Guez. Guez spoke about two of his projects that combine traditional photographic processes with research of landscape and flora to reveal less visible aspects of the region’s history. The Nation’s Groves (2010) refers to forestation efforts the Israeli government led beginning in the 1950s. Guez work includes photographs, videos, and scans from different archives, reflecting on the work of The Nation’s Groves Company to adopt and rapidly redefine the land as part of Israel's nation-building process. The photographic series Lilies of the Field (2019) examines the link between nature and culture, based on pressed flower albums that were common souvenirs for tourists and pilgrims visiting the “Holy Land” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and exploring the ways in which representations of the landscape, explicitly or implicitly, are subjugated to Orientalist precepts. Followed by a conversation where Guez discussed the larger concerns of his practice with Sara Reisman, executive and artistic director of The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and Artis Curatorial Seminar alum.