Schooling, group exhibition, Bat Yam Museum of Art, 2011. Academic research: Maayan Roichman,
curators: Tali Tamir and Meir Tati

Nurit Yarden Red Lines  series

Text by Tali Tamir

"(...) The Schooling exhibition explores educational processes, mechanisms of socialization, and the different modes used to shape young citizens' realm. It looks at the educational institute, at student-teacher relationship, and at the relationship between students and the space where they spend most of their time.

The educational poster is the ultimate platform for ideological and educational messages in the form of rules, images, adages and laws. Being such a platform, the educational poster flags the idea underlying the entire exhibition, that is, the attempt to scrutinize the normative school environment as an ideological one, which views the students in a certain role, and shapes them to fit that role.

It also examines the aesthetics of the school environment, as dull as it may be, while wondering what sort of people it nurtures, and whether this kind of aesthetics leaves any visual mark on them. Crossing lines dividing high art and visual school products such as chalks and blackboards, decorated notebooks, text books - and the language used on educational posters, the exhibition raises questions of didactics, teaching aids, and the educational potential of art as the embodiment of thought (...)"