Israeli Art After October 7

The paintings This Is Not the Same Country and Sisters in Fate were not born from a plan. I did not sit down and tell myself: now I will paint about October 7. They simply grew out of the rupture, out of something I could not contain any other way. There was an innocence before. Not a child’s, but an adult’s, someone who thought he knew where he lived. After October 7, that innocence was gone. And the place it left behind, I could not sit with in silence.

Art Does Not Heal, but It Lets You Speak, Lets You Find a Form

This is not healing. Not psychology. Not art therapy. Painting is what happens when there is no language precise enough, when the words sit aside and look at you like someone who does not understand what you want from them. I work in oil. It forces me to be there, with every stroke, with every layer. You cannot undo, you cannot scroll back. That is exactly what you need when you try to paint something that happened and cannot be undone.

What an Older Man Said and Did Not Say

At a solo exhibition I held, an older man approached the painting This Is Not the Same Country. He stood in front of it for a few minutes. And then I saw him shed a tear. He said nothing. He simply stood there. That is the moment I remember. Not a critique, not a sale, not a conversation about technique. Just someone who met something he already felt, and did not know where to put it.

Contemporary Israeli Art, Not Documentation but Testimony

There is a difference between documenting and testifying. Documentation lays out facts. Testimony places presence. My paintings about October 7 and the Israeli reality that followed do not try to tell what happened, everyone knows what happened. They try to ask where we are now. What remains. What changed inside us and did not return. This is a question an original oil painting can hold, not solve, hold.

Why Oil in Particular

There are artists who worked in charcoal after October 7. Some chose photography, video, embroidery. All are valid. I work in oil because oil demands time, and I need that time, in order not to paint out of shock but out of processing. Each layer that dries is also a layer that settles inside. The painting is ready when I am ready.

The Gallery Is Waiting

If you want to see the paintings themselves, This Is Not the Same Country, Sisters in Fate, and the rest of the works from the Israeli series, they are in the gallery. Contemporary Israeli art that hides nothing behind beauty. To the gallery.