The emphasis in the “Dudu Geva, Ten Years” exhibition is on Dudu Geva’s art, and highlights his self-portraits, paintings, and works he created in literary and journalistic collaborations. The selection opens a window onto his extensive oeuvre, which is always original, human, funny and poetic, and confronts the misfortunes it deals with in a virtuoso yet direct and simple, heart-rending way. The selection of books on display in the “Dudu Geva Studio” in the museum (about one-third of the books in his library) attests to his inexhaustible intellectual curiosity about the cultures of the East and the West, and to his sources of inspiration in high and low art, in always-new creation that challenges the dynamic relationships between art, technology, and the communications media.
On show in Dudu Geva’s reconstructed studio, which was inaugurated on the eighth anniversary of his death, there are selections from his works, his library, and his work tools (his workbench, photocopier, and light table). All these were transferred to the museum and placed there as parts of the active workshop space in the museum that bears his name, the Dudu Geva Studio, designed by Yael Reshef, who worked as a graphic designer at Maariv. The cabinets and drawers contain books that he published, many of which have long been out of print, and works that he created but didn’t publish. Films, including animation films, may also be watched.
The exhibition focuses on works that he created during the 1980s, but also displays early works from the mid-1970s: How to Kill a Turk and Rest While Doing It, and works from the “Knight Zik” series that have not been shown before this. The exhibition concludes with his late works, which are most topical today: Yasser the Rapper – The First and Last Hip-Hop Shahid, and Al-Huzeyl, the Cross-Eyed Shahid, as well as The Year of the Duck, Calendar for the [Hebrew]Year 5760, – a duck in a collage and India ink on a transparency that echoes one of Dudu Geva’s sayings that is valid for any place and time: “I don’t know when I’m a duck and when I’m using