An Exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Takes Showcases 'Constructive Responses to Natural Disasters'
In April 2015, an earthquake clocking 7.8 on the Richter scale flattened villages and killed thousands in Nepal. The world’s horrified citizens followed along in real-time over social media, as an avalanche mowed down trekkers on Mount Everest, centuries-old temples collapsed upon themselves, and some 3.5 million Nepalese found themselves, in one earth-swinging second, homeless and in desperate need of temporary shelter.
Maya Vinitsky, a curator at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in the Department of Architecture and Design, was watching along with the rest of the world. And she was both fascinated and inspired to learn about a small Nepalese village called Takure, where volunteers from a local NGO had brought in a brick press, mixed a combination of soil and local sand, and created thousands of homemade bricks to rebuild community schools, orphanages, and homes in wiped out by the temblors.