Push the Limits: Culture Strips to Reveal War

A diverse group of works at this exhibition shows how contemporary art responds to conflict

Emily Jacir, Crossing Surda, 2002. Two-channel video. Courtesy Simondi Gallery.

Fondazione Merz, Turin
27 October 2025 – 1 February 2026

by ALLIE BISWAS

The world is in flames and this exhibition at Fondazione Merz shows how artists are responding. In presenting a diverse selection of paintings, sculptures, installations and videos, by 20 artists from around the world, it first makes the case for art’s ability to be combative, surpassing the image it may summon for some, as the curators put it, as “muffled” or resigned. As the first work in the exhibition, Mona Hatoum’s Hot Spot (stand) (2018) sets the tone. A sculpture of the globe made from neon tubes that glows as if it is on fire, its bright orange light burns only from certain parts of the sphere, outlining regions that represent “hot spots” of devastation.

Mona Hatoum, Hot Spot (stand), 2018 © Mona Hatoum. Photo © White Cube (Photo: Ollie Hammick).

The centre of the first gallery is taken over by Memory Table, the imposing new iteration of an ongoing installation by the Moscow-based artist Katerina Kovaleva that commemorates victims of war. Suspended from the ceiling is a huge parachute on to which have been painted angels, who use magnifying glasses to capture heavenly light rays in order to study their earthly counterparts. It turns out that life beneath them is rather bleak: a large rectangular military table has been set with 40 metal plates and 40 glasses; a piece of dark stone, symbolic of bread, has been placed on top of each glass. Human absence is felt heavily. But, if anyone were to arrive, they would be gifted with the sight of the heavens above, reflected in the mirrors that the artist has placed alongside each plate.

Katerina Kovaleva, Memory table, 2025. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 27 October 2025 – 1 February 2026.

In one room resides Mirna Bamieh’s multicomponent installation Sour Things: the Pantry (2024), which responds to her personal experience of war. Consisting of delicate glass bottles that have been filled with salt and displayed on a mirrored surface on the floor, the work relates to the artist’s forced departure from her home in Ramallah, following the bombing of Gaza in October 2023. Before leaving, she emptied all the jars in her pantry, discarding produce that she had carefully nurtured over several years (Bamieh has spoken of the importance of fermentation in Palestinian cuisine, and its function as a preserver of culture).

Mirna Bamieh, Sour Things: the Pantry, 2024. Multicomponent installation. Noordbrabants museum, 2024. Photo Jan-Kees Steenman.

As the space in a house that operates by providing for future needs, guaranteeing nourishment in times of scarcity – or of war – the pantry was suddenly deprived of its function. Here, Bamieh revives it, although the trauma that permeates her project is present: the wallpaper that has been plastered on to the walls might look homey from a distance, but look closer and the bright lemon yellows in the foreground have been paired with shrivelled-up and decaying fruit whose skin is covered in grey mould.

Most potent of all is Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), a 130-minute video made by Emily Jacir in 2002, which is a testament to daily violence and intimidation. The footage being shown relates to Jacir’s journey from Ramallah to Birzeit University via the militarised Surda checkpoint. The artist’s walk along what, until March 2001, had been the last remaining open road connecting Ramallah with Birzeit University and approximately 30 Palestinian villages, now involved crossing a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers. In December 2002, Jacir decided to video this lengthy journey by filming her feet as she walked. She was soon stopped by soldiers, and her passport was discarded, after which she was held for three hours at gunpoint. Following this harrowing episode, Jacir decided to secretly, and illegally, record her walk by cutting a hole in her bag and placing a video camera inside it. Crossing Surda documents the artist’s journey to and from the university over eight days. There is inherent grimness in this work from the outset, but it is somehow lessened by Jacir’s determination and resilience. It powerfully responds to the exhibition’s call for culture to push the limits.