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Excerpt from “Fragility, Suspicion and Belonging: Tracing Existence in Itamar Gov’s Practice” by Merve Akar Akgün


The Plurality of Identity and the Fragility of Belonging

When I interviewed Itamar Gov on the occasion of his solo exhibition (Art Unlimited, March-April 2025, issue 86), he shared with me that his work explores the role of cultural traditions, customs, and gestures in shaping individual and collective identities. Gov explained that the following questions in his work reveals the conflicting relationships we, as individuals, forge with collective structures: “To what extent are we defined by the history of our family or the politics of the place where we grew up, and how far can we move away from them if we wish to do so?” This poetic counter-position to the concept of belonging partially explains the artist’s choice to center the exhibition around the idea of “family.” However, this interpretation of family extends beyond biological connections to encompass the families we cannot - or choose not - to belong to. Within this framework, animals, objects, shapes, and even voids emerge as potential family members. The “things” shrouded in white sheets imbue the space with an indescribable unease... We shall never know what, or whom, they truly represent (Family Gatherings, 2025). This approach, fully displayed in In Family of Things, encourages us to rethink all our encounters in life. Perhaps I can help convey the exhibition’s atmosphere by proposing that, as viewers, we confront not only the artworks themselves but also our own sense of alienation within the exhibition space.


Eerie Nostalgia and the Gloomy Memory of Childhood

Another strong layer in Itamar Gov’s work is shaped by the gauzy, unsettling boundary between nostalgia and uneasiness. Images of war, intertwined with childhood games, generate atmospheres that seem familiar at first glance but quickly evoke discomfort. This approach aligns with Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “unheimlich”, translated into English as “the uncanny”, describing the state when something familiar to us suddenly feels strange, eerie, and unsettling. The alienation of the familiar, the ominous images emerging from beneath the memories we once considered safe... Gov employs this emotional duality as a philosophical stance within his artistic practice. The artist’s approach, equating beach games with war wreckage on the same intellectual plane, emphasizes the idea that childhood is far from a neutral space and that it can be shaped both ideologically and historically. Here, nostalgia, which might otherwise conjure fond memories, is instead transformed into a deeply repressed trauma.


The Suspicion in the Image, the Layer in the Narrative

Never confining his artistic production and methods to a single medium, Itamar Gov’s works in the exhibition seem to constantly invite me to reconsider my position and reposition myself in the world. The relationship Gov forged with me as a viewer opened up a surprising space of freedom: As I traveled between images, objects, and spaces, I constantly found myself confronted with another layer of meaning. This state of his works “not requiring explanation,” a deliberate emphasis by the artist, fostered layers capable of intertwining seamlessly, leaving the viewer to navigate their imagination independently across diverse planes of meaning. As I left the yellow room with the rising and setting light, it seemed as if “meaning” was no longer under the artist’s domain, but had instead become rooted in my personal experience. (When Small Men Start to Cast Big Shadows It Means That The Sun Is About to Set, 2025). As Roland Barthes explains in his short text The Death of the Author, the death of the author signifies the end of the dominance of the author’s intention over meaning, placing greater importance on what the reader understands than on what the author intended.