“The more personal art is, the more universal it becomes.” Art has always been a personal act between the artist and themselves, as they seek to examine the world they live in and their conceptual/emotional place within it. Life and creation are a series of circles that appear in various iterations—one inside the other, one around the other—where the narratives emerging and responding to each other unify the timelines through a focused creative process. The exhibition is what connects the pieces of the puzzle, presenting them assembled before the audience. In recent years, artist Adva Drori has been exploring the correlation between her personal reality growing up in the kibbutz and the collective ideology of kibbutz life. She dissects this ideology into different chapters, examining the sociological incubator of her childhood and adolescence. This process is not unlike that of any artist engaging with their personal narrative. However, here, the artist is telling the story of an entire community—a community that lived under a uniform ideology, shared values, and commonly accepted norms. It's important to understand that the kibbutz was seen as a central model of collective life in the renewed Israeli society, with the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. The kibbutz was created to address significant issues of identity, personal versus shared responsibility, the building of a new state, and the complexities of political reality. I would like to expand our perspective and remind us that there are other 'phenomena' of collective settlements in Israel's history that were also characterized by elements of uniformity or prominent common denominators—such as absorption centers, settlements, development towns, and neighborhoods with religious or ultra-Orthodox character, among others. Perhaps these characteristics stem from the fact that the historical narrative of returning to Israel was perceived as a collective experience, rather than the typical immigrant experience of individuals or families moving from country to country. At the Kibbutz Gan Shmuel Gallery, Drori intends to create an exhibition as part of the kibbutz’s centennial events (Kibbutz Gan Shmuel is one of the few remaining kibbutzim that has not undergone privatization or significant community expansion from external members). Drori seeks to examine and explore a variety of themes that formed the value foundation of kibbutz life. These topics will be expressed in a large-scale installation where she will create sculptural objects using a combination of artistic disciplines and traditional crafts, practices that were once a communal value in kibbutz society. Every weekend during the exhibition, a performance will invite the local audience to create objects related to the exhibition's themes, which will be added to the installation and become an integral part of it. This collaborative space, which is not common in the creative processes of visual artists, will allow for the sharing of memories, a participatory dialogue, and a process of reflection. On one hand, it will evoke the conversations shared by people who work and live together, and on the other hand, it will reference the historical point in time when kibbutzim operated with a high level of collaboration for many years. What’s fascinating about the exhibition is the "laboratory" that the artist will create—a model of creativity that stems from the personal but simultaneously allows many others to participate in the creative process itself. This offers a space for dialogue and processing. The goal of this collaboration is to foster a dialogue that does not place blame on others, especially those who may not have been aware of or understood the consequences of their actions. It seeks to understand the importance of emotional, sociological, and communal processing as a tool for reflecting on the past, and equally, as a means of gaining new insights into contemporary life. Perhaps this is even more crucial in today’s Israeli society, which tends to favor polarized debates, slogan-based discourse, and generalizations—conversations that inevitably deepen divides and reinforce prejudices common in closed communities that encourage isolation rather than connection. It’s intriguing that an artist who grew up in a kibbutz society is the one offering a new model of communication with different perspectives for the many people living within this society. Drori understands the importance of looking beyond one’s own social context and exploring a broader spectrum to reflect on Israeli society as a whole. This exhibition will serve as an example of a constructive process for other communities with similar characteristics. It will highlight challenges through the metaphorical lens of artistic imagery and demonstrate that when art originates from commitment and depicts a personal truth, it has the potential to create a universal experience for audiences from various groups and subcultures—an experience that contributes and enriches, in contrast to a static, representational installation.