Jericho

Jericho

2020
Bas-relief in salvaged wood #129, 184 x 153 x 15cm.

This contorted shape of a decaying tree trunk, photographed in the Yosemite valley in California, was the subject for the work Holocene in 2013. Six years on it served as a template for Jericho. A work that like Holocene is also to be understood in relation to time, the title referencing the 10.000 year old tower of Jericho on the West Bank of the river Jordan that resembles a massive fossilized tree trunk. The tower is by far the oldest man-made monumental structure we know of. According to new insights it helped facilitate the transition to agriculture and the Neolithic revolution in the Levant (Barkai, R., & Liran, R, [2008]. Midsummer Sunset at Neolithic Jericho. University of Tel Aviv. Link: pdf ). This would make it a marker for the start of the process towards human hegemony of the earth, a process that is now reaching a critical phase.

View of the tower from the east showing both openings.
Image source: http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/barkai327/

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