Rediscovering feminism in Israeli art: New aspects of Pamela Levy's early work (original) (raw)
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Center-Periphery relations: Women's art in Israel during the 1970's, the case of Miriam Sharon
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 8(3), 2007
There was a time, not so very long ago, when the term "feminism", no matter how or by whom it was defined, belonged to a monolithic category. The second wave of feminism in America, in the late 1960s, seemed blind to all categories other then "male" or "female". Theories of class and the effects of a rapidly growing global economy; the mutable and fluctuating borders that constantly redefine communities, languages, practices, and national, ethnic and gender identities at the beginning of the millennium -non of this figured in the earliest attempts to postulate a politics of "feminism". In this article I aim to re-examine a distinct art manifestation made in Israel -that was clearly influenced by the American second wave feminism -during the 1970s by artist Miriam Sharon, and understand it in light of contemporary discourse.
From First-Wave to Third-Wave Feminist Art in Israel: A Quantum Leap
Israel Studies, 2011
Feminist art is currently thriving in Israel after having come a long and curvy way. Although early twentieth century Zionism promoted gender equality in the spirit of first-wave feminism, the movement never gathered the momentum needed for it to develop into second-wave feminism. While its influence could be seen in the art of the 1970s, particularly in the United States, feminist ideology remained absent from the work of women artists in Israel. This state of affairs continued until the 1990s, when a turning point occurred. The article shows the influence of second and even thirdwave feminism on Israeli women's art. It also considers the reasons for lack of a distinct category of feminist art prior to the 1990s, as well as the conditions and features of its emergence, using the case of American feminist art for comparison. The article demonstrates that although Israeli women artists were initially slow to develop a second-wave feminist ideology, it took them less than a decade to make a "quantum leap" into the next theoretical and practical stage. Within a decade and a half, Israeli women artists caught up with their colleagues overseas and are now creating cutting-edge, relevant, and contemporary feminist art.
Re-Reading Women Artists and Feminist Discourse in 1980s Israeli Art
"Re-Reading Women Artists and Feminist Discourse in 1980s Israeli Art." Israel Studies, vol. 28 no. 1, 2023, p. 162-182., 2023
The article proposes a gender-based re-reading, re-appreciation, and re-contextualization of the endeavors and works of several Israeli women artists in the 1980s. Adopting a mixed method (visual, gender, and critical research) and based on archival data and current interviews, it sheds light on silenced aspects in the works of women artists but also expands on the way aesthetics and politics in the field of art are understood within the dominant symbolic order.
Ph.D. Dissertation Abstract: "Jewish Feminist Art in the US and Israel, 1990–2017"
2017
This interdisciplinary study examines the social and cultural contribution of the Jewish feminist art movement that developed beginning in the 1990s in the two main centers of world Jewry, Israel and the United States of America. It is the first in-depth study dedicated to feminist art critical of Jewish tradition, halakha (Jewish law), and religious institutions. The study interrogates this art in the context of feminist art in both the US and Israel and in relation to the various feminisms of the Jewish religious spheres. The dissertation illuminates the reception of feminist Jewish art in the two art
Arts 2019, 8(4), 159, 2019
The Israeli art field has been negotiating with the definition of Israeli-ness since its beginnings and more even today, as “transnationalism” has become not only a lived daily experience among migrants or an ideological approach toward identity but also a challenge to the Zionist-Hebrew identity that is imposed on “repatriated” Jews. Young artists who reached Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) as children in the 1990s not only retained their mother tongue but also developed a hyphenated first-generation immigrant identity and a transnational state of mind that have found artistic expression in projects and exhibitions in recent years, such as Odessa–Tel Aviv (2017), Dreamland Never Found (2017), Pravda (2018), and others. Nicolas Bourriaud’s botanical metaphor of the radicant, which insinuates successive or even “simultaneous en-rooting”, seems to be close to the 1.5-generation experience. Following the transnational perspective and the intersectional approach (the “inter” being of ethnicity, gender, and class), the article examines, among others, photographic works of three women artists: Angelika Sher (born 1969 in Vilnius, Lithuania), Vera Vladimirsky (born 1984 in Kharkiv, Ukraine), and Sarah Kaminker (born 1987 in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine). All three reached Israel in the 1990s, attended Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and currently live and work in Tel Aviv or (in Kaminker’s case) Haifa. The Zionist-oriented Israeli-ness of the Israeli art field is questioned in their works. Regardless of the different and peculiar themes and approaches that characterize each of these artists, their oeuvres touch on the senses of radicantity, strangeness, and displacement and show that, in the globalization discourse and routine transnational moving around, anonymous, generic, or hybrid likenesses become characteristics of what is called “home,” “national identity,” or “promised land.” Therefore, it seems that under the influence of this young generation, the local field of art is moving toward a re-framing of its Israeli national identity. View Full-Text Keywords: transnationality; radicantity; Israeli art; FSU 1.5-generation immigration; women artists; intersectional theory; contemporary photography
A Space of Their Own: Arab Women Artists in Israel: Identity of a ‘Double-Minority’
2018
This research paper focuses on the art of three women artists – Fatima Abu-Roomi, Samah Shihadi and Fatma Shanan. The research paper focuses on the work of three women artists who are ‘double-minority’—Fatima Abu-Roomi, Samah Shihadi, and Fatma Shanan. Their ‘doubleminority’ status comes from being Arab women, raised in patriarchal communities as Muslims (Abu-Roomi and Shihadi), or Druze (Shanan), who live and work among a Jewish majority in the Western-based environment of Israel. The objectives of this research are to point out the significance of their art as an innovative and unique voice within the Israeli art scene that reflect the conditions of young Arab women living in Israel today. Through analysis of their art, the research will aim to explore the artistic strategies, topics, and styles, as a means of negotiating their identity as a ‘double-minority’. A feminist reading of the artwork will be followed by another theoretical point of view from the psychoanalyst Donald W. W...
Breaking the Pattern and Creating New Paths – Feminist Mizrahi Women Artists in Israel
Revista de Historia de Arte, 2015
This article addresses the work of Mizrahi women artists, i.e., Israeli-Jewish women of Asian or African ethnic origin, using the artist Vered Nissim as a case study. Nissim seeks to affirm the politics of identity and recognition, as well as feminism, in order to create a paradigm shift with regards to the local regime of cultural representations in the Israeli art scene. Endeavouring to find ways of undermining the rigid imbalances between different social groups, she calls for a comprehensive reform of the status quo through artistic activism. Nissim employs a style, content, and medium that disrupts the accepted social order, using humour and irony as unique weapons with which she takes liberties with conventional moral, social, and economic values. Placing issues of race, class and gender at the centre of her work, she seeks to undermine and problematize essentialist attitudes, highlighting the political intersections of different identity categories as the critical analysis of intersectionality unfolds.
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 2016
The article explores the subject of contemporary Jewish identity through the case of young immigrant women artists from the former Soviet Union in Israel, with particular emphasis on an analysis of the gendered aspects of their religious identity. Drawing on an interdisciplinary method, the research is based on in-depth interviews with artists, artwork analysis, and various theories from the social sciences and humanities. The article's main argument is that an analysis of the artistic practices of this and similar understudied social groups, particularly those practices undertaken in moments of conflict or times of deep social change, produces a more subtle understanding of the shifting modes of Jewish identity in the age of globalization and transnationalism, whose phenomenon of mass migration has led to the construction of new multi-hyphenated, hybrid identities.
Textiles and the Making of Israeli Modernism, abstract
Textiles and the Making of Israeli Modernism: From Functionalism to Fiber Art, 2022
The historiography of Israeli visual culture has often emphasized the ongoing tension between artists' search for local roots, visa -vis their perception of modernism as representing universal values, as well as their desire to maintain a dialogue with the cultural centers of Europe and the United States. 1 Recent scholarship continues to ask which sources shaped Israeli modernism, and what political implications followed the incorporation of Middle Eastern traditions, European Jewish heritage, or international avantgarde movements into an Israeli national style. 2 However, so far these scholarly debates have focused on the "fine art" fields of painting, sculpture, new media or architecture, and ignored other fields of aesthetic production. 3 Thus study will contribute to such debates by investigating a medium that has received little scholarly attention-textiles. Textiles and the Making of Israeli Modernism: From Functionalism to Fiber Art examines textile art and design produced in Israel between the 1940s-1990s, as a hotbed for a range of issues at the interstices of aesthetics, national identity, and gender. Grounded primarily in art and design history, but also in cultural history and material culture studies, this study uses unmined archival material, interviews, and objects' analysis in order to provide a fresh perspective on some of the principal questions