Rachel Gutgarts

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“How do you sing a song to the lord in a strange land?” This passage from psalms 137:4 followed by the famous passage, ‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning’ was the catalyst that sent me into this project, after leaving Jerusalem, my hometown, in order to immigrate to France. 

At first, I imagined that the strange land described in the passage would be, for me, France. I would come back to Jerusalem, to create and collect a few hand-crafted relics, in order to sing that song. 

When I arrived to Jerusalem, in the midst of the ongoing war, looking at the place I grew up from an outsider perspective, noticing all historical and religious narratives are drafted to war and radical messianic ideas, I discovered that in fact, the land that I thought I knew, became estranged to me, and the question, how do you sing a song to the lord in this land, remained an open one.

Rachel Gutgarts

Born in Jerusalem in 1992, she lives and works in Bagnolet. 

Graduate of the animation department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. 

*A LOVE LETTER TO THE ONE I MADE UP (*Bezalel graduation film, 2017) has been screened at numerous film and animation festivals around the world. Her independent short film VIA DOLOROSA(2023) was screened at Critics' Week during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Rachel is currently a student at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, where she continues to develop projects combining documentary, animation and installation.

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