Hansen | הנסן

In her new solo exhibition at the Mamuta Art and Research Center, artist Ruti Sela presents four works that explore the body, interpersonal connection, and technology. The centerpiece of the exhibition, Hugs 2025, revisits her first video work Hugs (1999)—a performance filmed on the streets of Jerusalem, in which Sela seeks hugs from strangers.

The exhibition as a whole reflects on the changes that have occurred over the past 25 years, spanning technological, moral, and ethical shifts, as well as demographic and political transformations in Israeli society and in Jerusalem.

The exhibition also features three earlier video works:

Hugs (1999), the original 9-minute silent video.

Hugs#2 (2017), a 1:30-minute video documenting a preschool birthday celebration, where the teacher encourages the children to kiss and hug the birthday boy—who is the artist’s son. The work raises questions about education, power, and vulnerability, both of the child and the artist-mother observing a ritualized social dynamic.

Therms and Conditions (2022), 1:32 minutes, created in collaboration with Maayan Amir. Filmed through the thermal scope of a weapon (Infrared Thermography), the video captures the lingering heat traces of strangers’ hands rubbing against the artists’ bodies on a cold winter night during the COVID-19 pandemic. It confronts the tension between the human need for closeness and the alienating, dehumanizing gaze of the weapon’s thermal lens.