Asaf Gam Hacohen | Mirage (The Island), 2025

The work positions Tel Aviv as an island: a city surrounded by sea, yet one that turns inward upon itself. This sense of island is both an urban condition and a state of mind, wherein a space that appears open and continuous becomes charged with tension during times of emergency, operating according to a logic of daily survival and persistent routine.
The images, photographed on the beaches of Tel Aviv during missile attacks, create a distorted, multi-layered cityscape, where the waterline, infrastructure and urban horizon intertwine. Added to this are traces of a digital, manipulated reality. Thus, Tel Aviv appears as a mirage: a fleeting promise of normality, freedom and movement, existing alongside a persistent threat.
The work, printed on a large wall, allows the viewer to feel as though they are stepping into the disrupted urban space itself. Thus, a liminal space opens up—emerging between the image and the act of looking, between the city as a surface and the city as a space one can almost walk into.