A large-scale open-air installation by Anna Kamyshan, Nabatele suspends a floating shtetl synagogue on a massive rock above the Venetian Lagoon, imagining shelter without ground and belonging without borders.
Drawing on nabat—a call to attention in moments of danger—and softened by the Yiddish -ele, the work becomes a quiet, almost silent signal: present, steady, and persistent. Its continuously lit windows echo the ner tamid, the eternal flame, offering inner light as a response to the turbulence and uncertainty of our time.
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Anna Kamyshan
Ukrainian, London-based multidisciplinary artist and architect of Jewish heritage, working with complex, spiritual, past- and future-inspired, playful, and dreamlike visions, ideas, illusions, and spaces. Her practice has been presented at the Venice Biennale, the Milan Triennial, and the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv, among other international platforms.
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Montreal Jewish Museum
An innovative place to connect with diverse Jewish heritage and history through new arts and cultural experiences. Operating as a community-driven, experimental cultural hub, it brings Montreal’s Jewish past and present to the public through exhibitions, events, food, music, tours, and research—inviting people of all backgrounds to connect with culture, history, and community.
Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks, curators
Maria Veits is a London-based curator and researcher whose work interrogates how state power, legal structures, and cultural institutions produce social reality. Working across collaborative and site-responsive formats, she develops transnational frameworks that challenge national narratives and institutional authority.
Yevgeniy Fiks is a Moscow-born, New York–based artist and organizer whose practice reactivates suppressed histories of Yiddish culture, diasporic memory, and Jewish political thought. Across multiple media, his work confronts nationalism, cultural erasure, and the afterlives of Soviet and post-Soviet ideologies.
Together, they have developed an independent, non-national curatorial and artistic platform shaped by Yiddish experiences of diaspora, migration, and doikeyt (hereness), advancing Yiddishland as a political and cultural proposition.
Supporters
Our heartfelt gratitude to those whose belief and generosity helped lift Nabatele into the sky above the Venetian Lagoon.
Amos Lieberman
Len Blavatnik
Martin Schlaff
Steve O’Hana
Acknowledgements
We warmly thank everyone who supported this project through their advice, encouragement, connections, and generous sharing of time and expertise.
Anastasia and Victor Lander
Daniel Weil
Edward Shenderovitch
Francesca Sarah Toich
Igor Piatigorsky
Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper
Israel Goldsmidt
Katya Krausova
Masha Nasimova
Mendel and Chana Kalmenson
Oleksey Makuchin
Svetlana Dragaeva
Team
We warmly thank the dedicated team whose vision, creativity, and tireless effort brought Nabatele to life.
Organized by
Museum of Jewish Montreal
Design and Engineering Consultancy
Aerotrope
Infrastructure Contractor and Engineering in Venice
Servizi Tecnici S.r.l. and Rein S.r.l.
Local Management Team
Venice Art Factory and Vincenzo Casali
Production Manager
Oleksiy Makuchin
Communications
Italiens PR and Niceone Agency
3d Modeling
Daniel Maga
Image
Dima Morozov
Assistance
Polina Ahababova
Web and graphic design
Semion Zlotnikov, Tsentsiper
Web development
Polina Nesanelis, Tsentsiper
Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia