The Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Gallery Place D.C. is a must-see installation memorializing the devastating massacre of Oct. 7. It is not just an unmissable event for Jews or Zionists, but for everyone.
The exhibition, open from June 14 to July 6, immersively recreates images from the Nova Music Festival on the morning of Oct. 7 and the terrorist attack that ensued.
Visitors of the installation walk through a timeline of the morning of the massacre. The experience begins with a simulated camping site of the music festival. Visitors are surrounded by screens and monitors that play both footage of the attacks and scenes of horror at Nova, along with testimonies from survivors who share their stories or family members sharing memories of the loved ones they lost.
The first level of the exhibition displays burned cars, accompanied by port-a-potties with visible bullet holes, and a large “lost-and-found” section of items left behind at the festival grounds. I found the “lost-and-found” stand particularly meaningful, as there was a large area featuring discarded shoes, reminding me of the famous exhibit in the Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Holocaust Museum exhibit features the shoes that belonged to victims of the Holocaust. This was a horrifying and moving mirror.
During my visit to the exhibit, Maya Izoutcheev, a survivor of the music festival, shared her experiences. Izoutcheev recounted her entire morning to the audience in detail. She started her testimony from when she woke up at 5:30 through the attacks at 6:39 a.m., the last time she saw a dear friend. Izoutcheev talked about the shelter she left mere minutes before a hand grenade blew it up, and her 13.5-mile run out to safety.
Upstairs, the installation features a stage, similar to one seen at the festival. Intricate lighting and music are playing, overlapping with the sounds of the videos and screens with cries, shouts, gunshots and testimonies of the attack.
One particularly devastating moment in the exhibit was in the back corner of the upper level. From where I stood, I could hear the music playing from the stage and see the lights from my peripheral vision, but I also saw several heartbreaking videos. A video of a young girl who had been stripped of her clothing and was surrounded by masked terrorists with guns strapped to them. An audio recording of the call between a 23-year-old taken hostage and her mother. Footage of a mother covered in blood being forcefully taken hostage and calling out for her son. It is painful to look at and listen to, devastating even, but deeply moving.
This moment, consisting of the visual of great suffering and cruelty overlapping with the sounds of music and bright lights, conveyed exactly what the exhibit intended. There is a strong and painful sting of the cruel realities of the day, but there is also music and hope. As their website puts it, the exhibition offers “a shocking contrast between light and darkness, good and evil, that is relevant to the entire world.”
One of the final rooms in the exhibition is a vigil for the lost lives at the festival, with each person represented by their name and a photo of their face. This segment of the exhibition is an intense reminder of how many innocent people were killed and an inspiration to carry on their memory through remembrance.
The Tribe of Nova, the group behind the exhibition, recommends it for ages 12 and up. This is a guideline I agree with, given the exhibit’s graphic and violent imagery.
The exhibit is very accessible, conveniently located only a block away from the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro stop on the Red Line, and it was an experience that I would recommend to anyone over 12 years old.
The Nova Music Festival Exhibition is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday through Thursday, but closes at 4 p.m. on Fridays. To visit, tickets are available for purchase. There are different price options for tickets, and the only difference between the prices of tickets is how much the visitor chooses to give to support the Nova community. For example, the cheapest ticket is $19.64, and it includes admission as well as a $18 Nova donation. From there, the tickets go to $38.24 tickets with a $36 Nova donation, $57.36 with a $54 Nova Donation, $75.97 with a $72 Nova donation and $187.59 with a $180 Nova donation.
While the website asks visitors to pick an entry time, the ticket is valid for the entire day, until 6:40 p.m. Tickets can be purchased on the Nova Music Festival Exhibitions website.
Visiting this exhibition is an experience that I am truly grateful for. I feel like I have left the exhibit changed, not because I understand everything, but because I’ve seen things that cannot be unseen and will not be forgotten. And I think that is the point of attending this exhibition: to look, to listen and to carry these stories with us, so they are never forgotten.
The Nova Music Festival Exhibition, though painful, was a deeply moving and unmissable installation, that I think anyone would benefit from seeing for themselves to feel the weight of the horrors of Oct. 7.
