Ruth Patir's Pulled Venice Biennale Work Gets Its US Premiere at the Jewish Museum
A video installation that never opened to the public at the 2024 Venice Biennale will have its United States premiere at the Jewish Museum in New York. Ruth Patir's "(M)otherland" — a multi-channel video work that combines ancient archaeology with contemporary themes — runs from December 18, 2026 through June 7, 2027 (Artnews; the Jewish Museum).
The work was originally created for the Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the large-scale international art exhibition held every two years in Italy. Patir installed it there in 2024, but the pavilion closed to the public amid protests on its opening day, and the piece was never shown to visitors (Artnet; the Jewish Museum via Facebook).
The Jewish Museum acquired the installation in December 2024, when it had still never been publicly displayed (Artforum; Artnet). The work had its world premiere at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in March 2025 (the Jewish Museum press release, 2 December 2024).
Patir's piece layers ancient figures onto present-day questions. In "(M)otherland," she films herself and her mother alongside 3D-scanned artefacts from the Land of Israel, blending family history with the deep archaeological record to probe questions of identity, motherhood and place. The result is a work that sits between the museum and the personal archive.
The Israel Pavilion, meanwhile, is set to return. Israel will officially take part in the 2026 Venice Biennale, two years after the pavilion closed to the public (the Jewish Museum via Facebook).
For New York audiences, the Jewish Museum's presentation is the first chance to see a work whose exhibition history has been anything but straightforward — pulled from view in Venice, then acquired by a museum before a single visitor had passed through its doors.
