"Race is not real but it is there and is killing people" (Colette Guillaumin, French feminist and scholar, 1995).
Development of Racial thinking began in the modern colonial and imperial era and largely characterized the Western world and its relations with other cultures. Scientific distinctions between races were perceived as a fact, as linked to geography, religion, class and color since the late 19th century.
The Israeli Declaration of Independence states that the State of Israel ”will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”. In contemporary Israeli society, racism is present in physical separation, discrimination on grounds of nationality and culture, terrorism on the basis of nationality, exclusion and hatred against anyone defined as "other". In the exhibition Banish the Darkness fourteen artists from the spectrum of Israeli society use a variety of media to reference expressions of racism and exclusion they have seen and experienced.