April 29, 2026 – February 28, 2027 | Level 1 and 2 

Yalla.
Arab-Jewish Encounters

An exhibition of the Jewish Museum Hohenems in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Munich

The history of Jews in North Africa and Western Asia is characterized by the close cultural proximity to a diverse Arabic environment and by mutual enrichment, just as much as by fractures, exclusion, and violence. It tells of neighbourly relations and exchanges, of common languages, musical traditions and ways of thinking. In the course of the 20th century, however, this divided past was increasingly idealized or suppressed ideologically. It has only been through the growing self-confidence of the Mizrahim—Jews from Arab-influenced cultural and linguistic regions in present-day Israel—that an awareness of this past has grown once again in the public consciousness.

These questions of self-image and historical memory form the starting point of the exhibition. Seven artists of Jewish origin with family roots in different regions in North Africa and West Asia explore Jewish identities between these poles in their oeuvres. Their works combine personal memories with historical experiences and tell of exile and loss, of social marginalization and discrepancies in the historical narrative. This has created a resonance space in which many voices can be heard and in which history is not a closed chapter, but continues to reverberate to the present day. Belonging emerges as a fluid and frequently contradictory experience—between cultures, languages, and memories.

• Artists: Eliyahu Fatal_Eli Petel | Hori Izhaki | Dana Flora Levy | Dor Zlehka-Levy | Joseph Sassoon Semah | Mona Yahia | Tamir Zadok | Liron Lavi Turkenich
• Curators: Anika Reichwald, Hanno Loewy (Hohenems) | Ulrike Heikaus (München)
• Curator of Education: Sapir von Abel (München)
• Exhibition Design:atelier roland stecher

 With texts in Easy-to-read German

Download the exhibition leaflet PDF