Tel-Aviv.- The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is pleased to present a new permanent exhibition “Walid Abu Shakra:Mintarat Albatten”, which opened on January 5th 2012. Mintarat Al-Batten is the name of a place in Umm el-Fahem, denoting the watchman’s post at Al-Batten (Arabic for the belly)—the potbelly-like summit whose slopes are now covered with the city’s new residential neighborhoods. These quarters, which surround the city’s old center in gradually expanding concentric circles, replace the age-old olive trees and sabra hedges, the landscapes of Walid Abu Shakra’s childhood and youth, which he repeatedly revisits in his prints. In its metaphorical use in the title of the exhibition, the name “Mintarat Al-Batten” deviates from its function of indicating a specific place, reflecting a process in Abu Shakra’s life and art. While returning to the views of the place and retracing them—a repetition which is bound up with the memory of the time in which the watchman’s post was hidden within the thicket of trees and sabra hedges—the artist himself seems to transform into a watchman on alert at the gate.