The title Light to the Nations points to the Jewish-Israeli context of the work and its connection to the historic and moral role of the Jewish people. At the heart of the work is the creation of a generation ship for Jews – a mothership that will lead humanity towards Tikkun Olam (lit. ‘the repair of the world’). This vessel is designed to host a large community for millennia and to travel far beyond our solar system. However, its ultimate goal is unknown: whether to inhabit a faraway planet, return to and populate Earth once it recovers, or travel endlessly, ever evolving, aboard this spaceship. The generation ship is seen as a project of the Jewish nation that will serve as the spearhead in repairing the world, an example for all nations to follow.

Light to the Nations proposes a redemptive idea for repairing the world and uses the political imagination as a platform for future possibilities, an act Yael Bartana terms pre-enactment. Through the generation ship, the artist creates an archeology of the future and a means to explore both the past and the present.