In “Brave New World: Recent Photographs by Assaf Evron and Oded Hirsch” shows how artists Assaf Evron and Oded Hirsch used photography to examine the effects of post-industrialization on marginalized communities in Israel. Both artists engage with the economic realities of disparate minority groups within Israeli society; for Evron, these are the scrap metal gatherers in his native Tel Aviv and for Hirsch, the members of Kibbutz Afikim in the Jordan Valley, where the artist was born and raised. While Evron responds to the unofficial shadow economies that have emerged through the inequities of globalization, Hirsch questions the ethos of the socialist movement pioneered by the kibbutzim. Although they employ different approaches, both artists explore themes of alienation in a brave new world of declining idealism, increasing privatization and complex power relations.

“Brave New World” was organized by Artis and supported by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.