Faculty Profile: Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
Faculty Profile: Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler
April 11, 2013
Negev Development & Community Programs
A recipient of a Marc Rich Foundation Grant for the Advancement of Women in the Academy, Dr. Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler of BGU’s Department of the Arts focuses on two main areas of research: Israeli architecture and visual culture.
While examining contemporary Israeli architecture, she considers its precursors during the British mandate and in the 1950s and 1960s. Among her research projects, she has been studying the work of the pioneering Israeli architecture firm, Sharon Architects, who designed the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
Known as the patriarch of Israeli architecture, the firm’s founder, Arieh Sharon, was a critical contributor to early architecture in Israel and the leader of the first master plan of the young state, reporting to then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
“It was interesting to see how these architects appropriated Israeli architecture to Nigeria while assimilating local influences,” Dr. Gitler says.
“They had to convey complex cultural codes and conditions to create their modern architecture. For example, they imprinted designs in concrete, integrated Nigerian stage design in their auditorium and incorporated primitive sculpture in a Western way. In this work, you can see how Western modernism is tailored to the local climate and the university’s needs.”
In addition, she has done research on the architecture of BGU’s campus. A study in collaboration with researchers from Sapir College examines how contemporary Israeli architecture relates to early architecture and spatial concepts introduced in post-modernism. “You always have interplay between tradition and resistance,” she says.
Dr. Gitler has explored an array of uniquely Israeli cultural phenomena. For example, she studied architecture and landscape design in Israeli films set on kibbutzim. Many of these films deal with the experience of losing a spouse or son in a war, and she examined the connection between the subjects and their settings.
She regards her job as more than a source of personal satisfaction. “On a national level, it is important to have good lecturers in the country’s periphery,” she says, adding that she plans to work with her department in advancing research on Negev architecture. She has already helped the municipality of Beer-Sheva create a list of buildings marked for preservation.
“There are 50-year-old buildings that have deteriorated as a result of climatic conditions and lack of preservation. BGU students from all faculties are now taking courses dealing with the architecture of Beer-Sheva and the campus, learning the importance of preservation. Through this project, we can familiarize students with the city and look at what should be done to provide sustainability in the desert.”
Dr. Gitler also investigates graphic communication in the form of Israeli posters targeted at diaspora Jews after the state’s creation. These posters, hung in schools, congregations and embassies, served to encourage aliyah, settling peripheral areas, and Zionist ideology.
“I look at how gender equality and inequality is featured in these posters, how ethnic differences were mediated, and what this says about Zionist ideology then and now,” she says.
Constantly viewing present trends through the prism of their forerunners, Dr. Gitler plans to examine how past graphic design and art affect visual communication today, particularly that on the Internet.
She has had a deep connection with BGU and the south of Israel throughout her life. Her father is Jiftah Ben Asher, a professor emeritus of geology and hydrology of BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research in Sde Boker, where Dr. Gitler spent much of her childhood.
Today, she resides in Omer, a suburb near Beer-Sheva, with her husband, a neurobiologist in BGU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, and their three children.
“The interplay between contemporary and traditional makes for fascinating discourse – we must always look at what came before,” says Dr. Gitler. And perhaps in reaction to current global trends that diverge from past practice, she makes a general appeal for continued support of the humanities.
“In an era that places so much emphasis on the exact sciences, it is important to remember that our life wouldn’t be what it is without art and architecture,” she says.
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