For thousands of years, the human body has inspired artists, whether directly through admiration for its beauty or as a transmitter of messages and emotions.
Images of the body have appeared in paintings and sculptures, on Greek vases and the walls of famous churches; in contemporary times, in graffiti, murals, and video installations. The body can also be a tool for infusing fashion with works of art.
In the artworks of the three artists I selected for this month’s column, whose works are now on view in galleries and museums in Tel Aviv, Ein Harod, Petah Tikva, Beersheba, and Jerusalem, the body plays diverse direct and indirect but important roles. It takes most of their focus or is an added element.
During the interviews, I’ve heard, for example, of the body as a metaphorical guard and as an expression of a daytime dream. Three Israeli artists agreed to answer my three questions:
What inspires you?
What do you call art?
What, in your opinion, makes your artwork different from that of other artists?
Hilla Ben Ari
Hilla Ben Ari, a multidisciplinary artist who creates mainly in video, sculpture, installation, and print, was born in 1972 and was raised in Kibbutz Yagur in northern Israel. For many years, she has been based in Tel Aviv.
Ben Ari has a BA in fine arts from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and an MA in poetics and comparative literature from Tel Aviv University.
Her works are featured in the collections of the most important Israeli museums, as well as the Bundestag, Berlin, and many private galleries.
She was awarded the Prize for an Established Video Artist by the Culture and Sport Ministry; the Pins Prize, the Israel Museum; the Premio Combat Prize, Italy; and the Kolb Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She has been exhibiting widely in Israel and abroad.
Her artworks combine different art disciplines and are based on deep research. “Research is also what I teach my art students at Bezalel,” she told the Magazine.
Solo exibition
The female body is a recurring theme in her work, which she also addresses in her current solo exhibition, Guard, at Tel Aviv’s Ahad Ha’am 9 Art Gallery, in the context of limitations, restrictions, and dealing with trauma.
Ben Ari started working on Guard before the current war, but many viewers will feel that it is relevant to their present experiences, especially the aspect of dealing with trauma in the body.
Participating in the Guard exhibition are actress Abigail Arieli, poet Yaara Shehori, musician Or Edry, and dancers Gal Ben Tov and Maayan Sinai. Each artist performs in his or field, reads, sings, and moves his or her body (some of the texts give direct instructions to the dancers), creating together a very coherent, intimate, captivating, and healing experience for the viewers.
Inspiration: “The work I have been developing over the past 20 years is based on various media and generates a dialogue with the fields of theater and dance, thus exploring the intersection of visual arts and performing arts.
“As part of my multidisciplinary work process, I study different fields to enrich and expand my artistic research. For example, a singing workshop that connects vocal and bodily dimensions, various somatic practices, or a writing program.
“One of the main themes of my work is the female body, which serves as a metaphorical junction where private and social issues are fused together. Raising questions about the body’s boundaries and states of trauma, my work is always inspired by texts, stories, and cultural narratives that relate to those themes. Memories also served as an important starting point in many of my projects [also in Guard].
“The [Guard] video installation performed by five women echoes that fragmented experience.”
Meaning of art: “For me, art is a deep, multidimensional exploration of our inner being and the world around us. I feel blessed to be an artist, especially during this difficult time, as art allows me to create transformations, develop political imagination, and generate a dialogue.”
Ben Ari’s Art: “Raising questions regarding the body’s boundaries and limitations, the female figures in my video works appear to be nearly frozen when their body seems to be trapped between virtuosic flexibility and a painful strain. This choreography of stillness articulates a sort of performance of trauma, which is very much identified with my work.
“In recent years, my projects have been large-scale multi-channel video installations that blend performing arts and visual arts and aim to create a new sphere that merges a stage and the gallery space.
“[In Guard] the performers’ bodies are projected as life-size figures and seem to exist perpetually in space. The installation creates a joint space for performers and spectators without any clear separation or barrier between them. The spectators who enter the space can wander around, creating the potential of affinity and intimacy. They become part of the spatial composition, as well as a part of the charged situation.
“Although my work has a distinct artistic language, I always seek to push my boundaries further into new exploration.”
http://www.hillabenari.com
Didi Khalifa
Didi Khalifa was born in 1995 and grew up in Moshav Yatir (known as Beit Yatir, a Religious-Zionist, Orthodox moshav located in the South Hebron Hills). For the past six years he has been based in Jerusalem.
After completing his IDF service, Khalifa graduated with a BEd in Fine Arts from the Pardes School of Art, in collaboration with the Hamidrasha – Faculty of Arts at Beit Berl.
He works with a variety of mediums, such as drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and video art. Khalifa boldly explores the relationship between the ancient worlds, Judaism, elegance, luxury, fashion, and, in his latest project, political issues. He makes connections that are not immediately apparent.
In Between Times, presented at last year’s Freshpaint art fair , he featured photographs of ultra-Orthodox men in high-quality bekishes (frock coats), presenting the haredi men as fashion models.
In his recently opened solo exhibition Acropolis, at the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, he refers to the Greek traditions, which includes (but not explicitly) the theme of men’s bodies, as the cult of athletic men’s bodies was a part of the Greek culture.
“For a long time, I had the desire to create something around Greek mythology. My initial thought was to paint in oil, but later I began thinking about amphorae as objects that inherently contain a sense of continuity – of action, of narrative. I worked on them in collaboration with ceramic artist Noa Platt, who crafted the vessels in terracotta. I painted on them,” he told the Magazine.
Greek-style vases
The series of vases are reminiscent of the ancient Greek style of red-figure pottery, dated to 530 BCE, with a characteristic black background.
Khalifa’s centaurs have curly sidelocks, kippot, and tefillin. He transforms them into Hilltop Youth and operates in a Greek visual language and symbols to expose religious masculinity, heroism, and violence as components of an extremist political identity.
“In Greek mythology, centaurs are described as wild, violent, and unruly, while Israel’s Hilltop Youth often match those very same characteristics.
“It is fascinating to see what happens when two such different cultures meet within a single image that fuses the archaeological-historical and mythical with the local, contemporary, and religious,” Khalifa noted.
Inspiration: “I have a strong obsession with the luxurious, the spectacular, and the beautiful, as well as with religious themes rooted in my own spiritual experiences. My main inspiration comes primarily from these two sources, but also from the art I encounter – the exhibitions I attend and the works that move and influence me.
“I deeply admire Dutch painters, such as Vermeer and Rembrandt, as well as classical sculptors and Renaissance artists.
“In addition, I have a profound love for fashion. I eagerly anticipate fashion weeks and even set reminders in my calendar to watch them. This passion weaves its way into my creations as a hidden layer, subtly enriching them with elegance.”
Meaning of art: “I consider art to be anything that seeks to speak through visual imagery – every encounter with a photograph, painting, or sculpture that stirs curiosity, provokes questions, evokes frustration, moves the heart, or even induces boredom.
“To me, art is anything an artist deems significant enough to explore and dedicate his or her time and passion to.”
Khalifa’s art: “I know very few artists who engage with Judaism in their work, certainly not to the degree that I do. My practice intertwines religious themes with diverse cultures and entirely foreign aesthetic and material contexts. By pushing these boundaries, I explore what unfolds from these intersections.
“Often, the resulting works are compelling, inviting an inward gaze toward Judaism, while simultaneously drawing attention outward to the material tensions that arise.
“Moreover, I work across multiple media. Though my roots are in painting – my personal sanctuary – each piece is conceived with careful reflection on the precise mode of expression best suited to convey its idea, whether that be sculpture, photography, video, or painting.”
https://www.didikhalifa.com
Gabriella Klein
Gabriella Klein, born in 1970 in Tel Aviv, spent her formative years in the US, where she moved with her family at age eight. She returned to Israel in her early 20s and has been based in Tel Aviv since then.
Klein paints, draws, and creates monumental site-specific murals that rely on her visual sensations in her immediate surroundings.
She has a diploma from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, and an MFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
Klein is a recipient of the Rappaport Prize for Tel Aviv Museum of Art acquisitions, the Culture and Sport Creativity Prize, and many more.
Her work has been widely exhibited in Israel and abroad and is part of many collections. Currently, she exhibits at three places: a solo exhibition, Night Train, at Petah Tikva Museum of Art; at the Jerusalem gallery Studio of Her Own, in a show titled Across the Sea; and at the Negev Museum of Art in Beersheba, where her murals, images of curtains and drapery, painted with wall paint, are incorporated into the display of the exhibition A Well.
Klein, coming from an artistic family, was naturally nourished by art from an early age. At first, she wanted to practice art more functionally, as a book illustrator. “Having studied illustration gave me important skills in drawing, which I use nowadays,” she noted. Nevertheless, painting has been her true calling.
She paints from observation of her family and friends. Her approach to painting the body has changed over the years.
“I used to paint it as fragmented; now, in the current exhibition, Night Train, there are whole bodies,” she noted.
The way she positions bodies in her paintings, whether they are in bed or on a train, expresses Klein’s longing for daydreaming and rest, for which she often doesn’t have time, she said.
Traveling outside windows
Night Train records her experience on a trip in India, when the world is “traveling” outside the windows, and a body’s movement is limited to the space of the train compartment. Picturing her close friends on the train, Klein covered their bodies with a cloth (her other repetitive motif is fabric), reminiscent of a Roman toga, taking the viewers on a journey in time as well.
Inspiration: “I’m inspired by finding something banal in my daily life that suddenly feels visually exciting – patterns and folds in fabric, my daughter’s face peeking through the leaves of a plant, or the curve of my husband’s back in bed. I like to take these ordinary moments and give them a monumental quality.
“I still find it fascinating to create the illusion of form and sculptural presence on a flat surface.
“My inspiration continues throughout the painting process. Sometimes I discover new ways to apply paint or am surprised by how a single color choice can transform the entire painting. Lately, I’ve been drawn to the pared-down color and composition of frescoes by Giotto and Masaccio.”
Meaning of art: “For me, art is about freedom. In my studio, I can make whatever I want – it’s an alternative world where I create problems and then try to solve them.
“That process can be frustrating and also deeply satisfying.”
Klein’s art: “It’s different because my hand made it. I don’t believe subject matter needs to be entirely original – what matters is that my work comes from my own visual and emotional experience, from my body. That makes it something only I could create.
“I live with multiple identities and roles: mother, wife, teacher, American, Israeli, woman, Jew, and these are indirectly present in my work. But I also feel just as deeply connected to my identity as a painter. Being an artist connects me to art history and a larger creative tradition.
“With both my parents being painters, visual language is, in a way, my mother tongue.”
https://www.gabriella-klein.com