A new exhibition marking 25 years of activity by Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights
On Wednesday, April 9, 2025, the exhibition Home.Place | بيت.مكان will open at the “Bread and Roses” gallery in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, marking 25 years of work by Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, an organization dedicated to promoting fair planning and human rights in the Israeli-Palestinian space.
The exhibition offers a unique perspective on the organization’s work over the years, focusing on the stories of communities struggling for recognition and planning rights. Alongside these stories, artworks by leading Israeli and Palestinian artists will be displayed — some created especially for the exhibition and others on loan. These artistic works broaden the narratives of the communities and allow visitors to experience the space we live in from new perspectives.
Since its establishment, Bimkom has worked with around 200 marginalized communities. Our goals are to ensure these communities enjoy full and equitable rights; to promote justice and transparency in planning and building processes; and to ensure public resources are fairly distributed through spatial planning and development. We integrate our professional planning knowledge with local knowledge of residents and communities, demanding the state meet its obligation to ensure all citizens and residents have an equal chance to thrive and prosper. Bimkom’s in-depth work with communities aims to identify their needs, wishes, assets, and capabilities, working with and for the communities to define their own planning vision. Alongside community representatives, we present this vision to the planning establishment, drawing on a diverse toolbox of planning, legal, and bureaucratic means. We also work to secure human-rights based planning policies.
Current times present us with serious challenges. Hamas’s appalling attack on the Western Negev’s communities, and the subsequent war on Gaza, have cost numerous lives and left entire communities devastated. Under the fog of war, the Israeli government is deepening the regime of Jewish supremacy throughout Israel/ Palestine. We are witnessing not only the total destruction of Gaza’s urban and rural fabric, but also growing attempts to displace and expel Palestinian communities in the West Bank and the Negev, to limit their freedoms, to violate their rights, and to corral them into ever-shrinking territories. Among the Jewish-Israeli public, too, there is a growing tendency to silence any criticism while labeling individuals and groups as traitors. Human rights organizations are among the targets of this policy, Bimkom included.
Israel is currently descending into a moral and political abyss at a horrifying pace. Despite this, or precisely because of it, we have chosen in this exhibition to showcase stories that also include moments of optimism and small achievements. Drawing on Bimkom’s diverse experience, the exhibition offers a glimpse into the lives of communities that lack official recognition or face ongoing planning discrimination and harmful planning. The exhibits present unique stories of each locality and its residents’ lives, alongside their ongoing struggle for recognition, formalization, and planning. Each story highlights a moment of success resulting from years of planning initiatives pursued in the face of harmful bureaucracy and frequent setbacks.
Several artists have offered fresh perspectives on the homes, places, lives, and power relations shaping the communities. Alon Cohen-Lifshitz builds a demolished home, disrupting the entrance to the gallery. Adi Segal documents life on a Bedouin farm in northern Israel. Gidon Levin’s photographs explore the lives of residents in the Ramat Eliyahu neighborhood of Rishon Lezion, which is slated for raze-and-rebuild schemes. Miki Kretzman reveals spotless order in the Negev village of al-Zarnuk, challenging common perceptions of “unrecognized village.” Nava Sheer and Oren Yiftachel take us on a journey through time and space, presenting historical aerial photographs of the Negev. Talia Hoffman uses a stereoscope to retrace her visit to Dekeika, the hidden village on the margins of the South Hebron Hills. Galya Lulko’s photos capture childhood moments in the same village.
Tamar Paikes’s raw material is the mountain of planning papers concerning Jerusalem’s al-Isawiyyah neighborhood. From the unending heap of bureaucracy, she fashions miniature human figures. Majd Abed’s drawings portray the suffocation and chaos created by Israel’s control in al-Isawiyyah. Saher Miari, Gaston Zvi-Ickowicz, and Alon Cohen-Lifshitz offer a glimpse into the human and historical layers of the al-Walaja village, viewed through a cistern. Annie Kantar’s poem describes the demolition of a home, with all its ramifications, while Yahel Gazit documents what remains after the demolition. Lastly, Raida Adon embarks on a journey through Jerusalem’s Old City market, carrying her house on her head. She reminds us of the human longing for a stable home, one we can return to whenever we wish, without ever fearing that it may have vanished.
Amidst endless plans for expulsion and dispossession, Bimkom continues to struggle to protect every human’s right to place, to home.
