Sala-Manca Group: Like a Bird’s Nest

September 24 - November 29, 2026

Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 23 | 7 - 9 PM

Additional Launch Week Events, here

Sala-Manca Group (Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman) in collaboration with Meydad Eliyahu, Brian Hoad, Ktura Manor, Itamar Mendes-Flohr, Yeshaiahu Rabinowitz, and Nir Yahalom

FENTSTER is pleased to present a landmark retrospective from the international artist collective, the Sala-Manca Group. Installation, video and photography are exhibited together for the first time, all connected to the ritual object of the sukkah—a temporary hut traditionally erected during the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Over the last twenty years, Sala-Manca has explored the symbolism and function of the sukkah and related themes of shelter, impermanence, displacement, and liberation. In their hands, the sukkah is interchangeably a ritual structure, an ethnographic object, a work of art, an ephemeral monument, a site of protest, and a performative arena. This exhibition traverses unlikely geographies, travelling through time and place, from a small town in Germany where no Jews remain to a Jahalin Bedouin community in Khan al-Ahmar; from the contested streets of Jerusalem to the fraught landscapes of Ontario. 

Experience three full size sukkah structures including a new outdoor commission by FENTSTER from local artists: Maxine Lee Ewaschuk, Rochelle Rubinstein, and Jessica Thalmann who also created a window installation at our host venue, PIX FILM Gallery.

Presented by FENTSTER in collaboration with venue partner PIX FILM Gallery 

The exhibition features:

• The Deller Sukkah (2017) /// An updated replica of a painted wooden sukkah made in 19th Century Bavaria

• The Kingston/Jerusalem Sukkah (2018-2024) /// With murals of the Canadian winter and an abstracted representation of the 2023 artist intervention in Jerusalem: Monument of Sukkot for Peace 

• The Eternal Sukkah Project (2014) /// A short film and documentation about the Eternal Sukkah made in collaboration with members of the Jahalin Bedouin Tribe in Khan al Akhmar 

• “Geography of Cracks״ /// A short film about the Deller Sukkah project 

• “Dismantling” /// A short film showing the dismantling of the Deller Sukkah

Like a Bird’s Nest is made possible with generous support from the Emerald Foundation, Zukerman Family Foundation, Doveleaf Foundation, Lynne and Michael Mitchell and Family, and Anonymous.

FENTSTER Pop-Up 

at PIX FILM Gallery /// 1411 Dufferin Street, Toronto /// between Davenport and Dupont

Exhibition Hours

Wednesdays & Thursdays 1 to 6 pm

Fridays to Sundays 1 to 5 pm

Special Sukkot Hours

September 26 - October 4 

Open Daily Noon to 7 pm

Bring your lunch and dinner to our outdoor sukkah and visit the exhibition! The artists will be onsite many days and special programming will be offered most evenings. View the events during the Festival of Sukkot here

*Hours are subject to change, please check the website & social media for updates

Upon request, we are pleased to schedule additional visiting hours as well as group tours and private events including in Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and ASL. Contact info@fentster.org 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman are artists who have been creating in various fields—performance, video, new media, and installation—under the name of the Sala-Manca Group since 2000; both born in Buenos Aires, they were based in Jerusalem since 1996 and are now also based in Toronto. They have presented their work at renowned venues worldwide, including Castle Ujazdowski (Warsaw), Kaunas – Cultural Capital 2022, Eyebeam (New York), BlackBox (Belfast), IMPA (La Fábrica, Buenos Aires), KunstHall 314 (Bergen), Rum44 (Aarhus), KlezKanada (Quebec), the Israel Museum, Tate Modern (London), Haifa Museum of Art, the Israeli Center for Digital Art (Holon), and the Jerusalem Film Festival. Both Mauas and Rotman have served as arts lecturers in leading institutions in Israel and internationally, publishing academic and non-academic books and scholarly articles and their work explores cultural translation and migration, focusing on language, media, and urban environment, often addressing tensions between low- and high-tech aesthetics and sociopolitical issues. Sala-Manca founded and edited Hearat Shulaym (Note in the Margin), an independent quarterly for contemporary art and literature (2001–2007), and also curated and produced the Heara multidisciplinary art events (2001), site-specific happenings at politically charged historical sites across Jerusalem; together they established the Underground Academy artist residency program and the Museum of the Contemporary. In 2017, the artists received the Award of the Ministry of Culture, and their works are in the collections of the Israel Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Between 2019 and 2024, Rotman served as the Head of the Department of Theatre Studies at the Hebrew University and was a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto in 2024; he is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Studies at the Hebrew University and part of the University of Toronto–Hebrew University of Jerusalem Research & Training Alliance: Models of Urban Evolution. Rotman is also currently Research Associate of the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. Mauas has served as Director of the Mamuta Art and Research Center in Jerusalem since Sala-Manca founded it in 2009 and is currently pursuing a PhD at Queen's University.

Maxine Lee Ewaschuk is dancer, fibre artist and academic based in Toronto. She shares her original embroidered artwork @exp.threads, which she describes as “stitching stories with thread and words.” Ewaschuk’s work draws on a wide range of influences from modernist art to Korean folk culture to the Yiddish cultural milieu. Inspired by early 20th-Century Expressionist painters, she interprets their dynamic brushwork into lively stitches and bold embroidery. 

Rochelle Rubinstein is a Toronto-based printmaker, painter, fabric and book artist; a community art facilitator; and a steward of Bela Farm in Hillsburgh, Ontario. Her work has been exhibited in diverse places such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland; Yeshiva University Museum, New York; Print Triennial, Estonia; and McMaster Museum of Art, Royal Ontario Museum, and Chinese Cultural Centre, in Canada. For eighteen years, Rubinstein was a member of Loop Gallery, where she had regular solo exhibitions. Rubinstein’s work can be found in public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Jessica Thalmann is an artist, curator and educator currently based in Toronto and New York City. She received an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College and a BFA in Visual Arts from York University. She has been an artist in residence at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, and at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at Aperture Foundation, International Centre for Photography, Camera Club of New York Baxter St, and Humble Arts Foundation (New York), VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), Museum of Contemporary Art, Harbourfront Centre, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Varley Art Gallery of Markham, Angell Gallery, Gallery TPW, Art Spin, Koffler Arts and The Bentway (Toronto). Her permanent public sculpture and mural, commissioned by BMO, opened in 2025 at BMO’s new flagship branch at the Eaton Center.

ABOUT FENTSTER

FENTSTER (meaning "window" in Yiddish) began in 2016 as an independent, artist-run exhibition space located in the storefront window of the hub for the Jewish communal organization, Makom. For nearly 9 years, FENTSTER presented rotating, site-specific installations of contemporary art connected to the Jewish experience in that window in downtown Toronto under the leadership of curator / founder, Evelyn Tauben. FENTSTER has also developed the exhibition On the Doorposts in partnership with the Toronto Holocaust Museum as well as partnered on projects and events with the Noor Cultural Centre, Ashkenaz Festival, Ontario Jewish Archives, Myseum Festival, and many more. Providing a window onto Jewish life through art, FENTSTER’s work is now moving beyond its initial window gallery space – catalyzing critical conversations through exhibitions, programs, gatherings, and other initiatives furthering a commitment to creating a world free from oppression and to telling diverse stories connected to the Jewish experience. FENTSTER recently co-led the SHVILIM project in partnership with No Silence on Race and Shoreline Collaboratives, commissioned by the Ontario Arts Council. SHVILIM offers a new path to understanding and speaking about antisemitism in and through the arts.

ABOUT PIX FILM COLLECTIVE

PIX FILM Collective engages with artistic voices facilitating space for research, creation, exhibition and discussion at PIX FILM Studio/Gallery. The collective provides appropriate support by means of mentoring, guidance and equipment materials resources for artistic explorations. At PIX FILM Collective we encourage cultural advocacy and collaboration with service organizations.