11 artists living between Israel and US express their journey at Olim Artists Lab
Oil paintings, readings, zine and a film are some of the creative responses at the Neve Schechter artist residency
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
A group of eleven artists who live and work between Israel and the US presented parts of their artworks, readings and a documentary on Sunday night in “Where You From? 11 Creative Responses to Life Between Two Countries,” part of the Olim Artists Lab at Neve Schechter – Center for Contemporary Jewish Culture in Tel Aviv.
The residency is called Olim Artists for the artists’ identities as North American immigrants to Israel, some of them veteran immigrants, others born to American parents living in Israel, and a few more newly arrived in the country.
The overarching theme of the evening and the artists’ works focused on their sense of living between two cultures, said artistic director Yael Biegon-Citron.
The two-month residency, supported by the Sapir Center for Jewish Education and Culture, focused on creating works that reacted to their feeling both at home and alienated, a sense that has intensified in the last 15 months of the war in Israel and antisemitism in the US.
Rebecca Portman produced “Identities on Fire,” a vivid zine, her publication of original texts and images that reflected her grappling with the Israeli, Palestinian and American flags and how those national fabrics have played into the tensions of the time.
Oil paintings by Michal Berman portrayed her two “places,” said Berman, including the New York City subway, Tel Aviv’s Gordon Beach and the Jaffa port. Berman said she was surprised by the darkness of her New York scenes compared to the light-filled imagery of Tel Aviv, despite the grim, sad atmosphere of the last 15 months.
Dancer and journalist Ori Lenkinski, who was born in Canada, raised in the US by her Israeli mother and Canadian father and now lives in Israel, spoke poignantly about her mixed Israeli-American identity, through the prism of her daughter’s upcoming bat mitzvah celebration.
Jacob Dickerman read “Mediterranean Homesick Blues,” about straddling the two places and cultures as a single person while Elana Rozenfeld performed “Our Paradox is *Real,” a slightly more middle-aged version of the same experience, pointing to the complexities of raising American-Israeli children.
The final piece was a documentary-in-progress by Abraham ‘Abie’ Troen, as the audience screened selected scenes from the film about his father, Professor Ilan Troen, as he headed to the US to give talks about his latest book.
The trip was in the wake of October 7, 2023, when Troen’s daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Matias, were murdered in their home in Kibbutz Holit as they protected their son, Rotem, with their body.
