“Genetic Dialogue” | Design Museum Holon
Curator: Rona Zinger
May 28 – October 26, 2019
Juany Mukmel is a textile designer who works mainly with paper. Talia Mukmel is a product designer who manually crafts her pieces. Juany and Talia are also a mother and daughter. They do not work together, at least consciously, yet the relationship between their works is evident in terms of their technique, language, and endless devotion to working with materials.
The exhibition “Genetic Dialogue” displays Juany and Talia’s bodies of works both separately and together. In some cases the boundaries are blurred, and the process initiated by one seems to develop into a project undertaken by the other. Both are meticulous, studious, and industrious, and their works are rich with details and textures. A significant part of each project’s development process takes place by means of manual work, and both mother and daughter are involved in the constant exploration of techniques and materials based on the principle of “Thinking by making.” Despite their points of confluence, the generational difference between them is also evident. Juany is influenced by age-old tribal traditions, to which she adds a personal and contemporary interpretation. She can spend entire evenings in the studio located in her home, immersed in meditative thoughts, stitching one stitch after another in a detail-filled textile project, and working at her natural rhythm. Talia works intensively, with an emphasis on creating more efficient production processes, and insists on connecting the craft traditions she has inherited from her mother to cutting-edge technologies and contemporary demands.
Occupational genetics is a psycho-genetic field of research that studies the occupations chosen by various people – a choice that is not biologically determined, yet which is sometimes transmitted from generation to generation as if it were part of a family’s DNA. This field of study focuses on the cross-generational aspects of professional inclinations and choices. This type of “hereditary command” can weigh on those following in the professional footsteps of their parents, especially if they do not possess the necessary skills. In Juany and Talia’s case, their occupational-creative genetics are the catalyst and blessing shared by both mother and daughter, who are both part of a lineage of creative women.
The exhibition explores this “hereditary command,” as well as the right to choose, not through the selection of personal traits, but rather through processes of development, materials studies, and objects. The displays also explore the implications of this genetic heritage, as well as of generational differences, on the adoption of different techniques and technologies, on the product’s pertinence to the present and on its relationship to the past.
