Michal Rovner in front of the projection on the medieval foundation of the Louvre, 2011

PARIS—The Middle East peace process has for decades been stuck in a loop. At the Louvre, Israeli artist Michal Rovnerechoes the turbulence but broadens her probe with "Histories," an installation composed of demolished houses, which hints at the underlying human issues of solitude and belonging. In the Cour Napoléon, Rovner has built two imposing structures from the stones of Israeli and Palestinian houses, some collapsed from years of neglect, some razed as part of Israel's settlements policy. Bringing together about 110 tons of material from Jerusalem, Nablus, Haifa, Galilee, Hebron, Bethlehem, and the Golan Heights, "Makom II" and "Makom IV" evoke not only the literal meaning of "place," but also lived experience and history, and ultimately, a yearning to settle into a true home.

"I always like to record something from reality, I like to shift it out of place, out of identity, to take it to another place and erase a lot of it," Rovner said recently at the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, in a conversation with fashion designer Alber Elbaz and authorDavid Grossman, with whom Rovner has created a new children's book. "In the end, it becomes like a drawing of reality, but it has an aspect of evidence to it."

Some 20 stone masons — both Israeli and Palestinian — accompanied the artist to Paris. "I told them we had a very big job to do and asked if they were willing to work hard with me, even if it was a very difficult task in such a short time," Rovner recalled.

"The Palestinians told me, 'Yes, we will do everything to help you realize your dream. We will be your army.' And I told them that I didn't want them to be my army, but my friends. 'But we are not your friends, we are your family, now and forever,'" the Palestinians replied, according to Rovner. The anecdote hints at the fraught emotions simmering beneath this project, which deals with a subject that runs to the core identity of every Israeli and Palestinian, a relationship in which unity has been so historically scarce.

Elbaz, the Moroccan-born Israeli creative director at fashion house Lanvin and a close friend of Rovner's, said half-jokingly that he had expected to see "hunks, muscle boys, almost like an ad for aftershave," and so was surprised by the group of scrawny-to-average laborers on their lunch break, tucking in tuna with onions and olives, on French baguettes. "It was not as sexy as I thought it would be. They were fragile," said the fashion designer.

Fragility is a central theme of Rovner's installation. A sharp crack almost bisects "Makom IV"'s black stone structure, bluntly imposing a symbol of weakness on the building blocks. "It's a heartbreaking crack," said Grossman, who had just returned from seeing the exhibition with his wife and has written an essay for the exhibition catalogue after seeing the work pre-staged in Rovner's garden, back in Israel. "Immediately, you think of the humans who live in such structures and their lives, which are crushed by war, fanaticism, fundamentalism, all the craziness of mankind."

Addressing an overarching, thorny subject, Rovner's installation nevertheless manages to open a more pragmatic dialogue with the storied setting of Louvre, through its questioning of broader themes that suit the museum's universality and world-historical mandate. "Even if they are newcomers, these stones don't radiate a sense of inferiority in front of the huge buildings of the Louvre. They rather radiate an ancient presence, extremely strong and primal," noted Grossman, adding that, "the politics of the stones is not only our rotten politics of the Middle East."

Rovner takes her art further into to the heart of the Louvre with a double projection, creating frescoes-cum-cave paintings on the museum's oldest foundation walls in the medieval rooms. A pyramid suggests both Egypt and the Louvre itself. Streams of human figures walk across the wall in all directions, referencing basic wanderlust as well as the seemingly endless journey of the Israeli and Palestinian people.

The greater themes of "Histories" — effectively obtuse, as always in the artist's work — are intriguingly close to those of Grossman and Rovner's children's book "The Hug," a quasi-notebook of storytelling and scribbles, lyrically poetic in the vein of Khalid Jibran or Paulo Coelho. Written by Grossman and illustrated by Rovner, it is the story of a boy who is reassured by his mother that he is special and unique — and is uncomfortable with the idea. Even in her embrace, he keeps repeating to himself that he is not alone. "It means that we cannot really be understood, if we are one of a kind. No one will know what exactly it is like to be us," said Grossman of the project, which philosophizes about belonging and identity, as well as the fundamental desire for a true homeland.

"The Hug" is a novel project for Rovner, who has only rarely sketched, with the notable exception of creating a drawing of red poppies for Elbaz's mother on her death bed. "In a strange way, our art is quite contradictory," Grossman told Rovner. "You take human figures and erase all the facts of their lives, making them mere symbols. I concentrate on every human being that I write about, from his physicality to his spirituality, the way he walks, he talks, he makes love. Part of the magic of 'The Hug' is that we found a way to create together; the drawing and the letters seem to originate from the same place, as though there was a flow of creation. And even though the characters that you drew are so delicate, and sometimes are only a clue of a mother, a child, and a dog — they create so much emotion, you can feel the tenderness in the lines."