Jerusalem’s largest Biennale yet asked artists to plumb their depths

When the Jerusalem Biennale opened last week, it marked the contemporary Jewish art event’s largest edition yet.

With the theme of “De Profundis, From the Depths,” the biannual festival’s focus is on war and its impact on the participating artists, as they examined the capacity of art to create space for reflection and renewal following the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught in southern Israel.

“I think it’s connected somehow to the situation,” said Biennale founder and director Rami Ozeri.

“All these Israeli artists realize it’s time to get together, to support each other, to be more available. We built recognition slowly, and now we’re gaining the fruits.”

Ozeri said he felt the title got artists thinking.

The event, held through November 12, showcases more than 250 Israeli and international artists and their work in 42 exhibitions across 21 venues in the city. Some have been exhibiting since September 24; others will begin in mid-October.

Three well-known contemporary Israeli artists, Belu-Simion Fainaru, the Israel Prize-winning artist currently representing Israel at the 61st Venice Biennale, as well as the artists Yehudit Sasportas and Hanita Ilan, winner of the 2025 Rappaport Prize, contributed works, some premiering at the event.

The main exhibit, “Or Chozer (Reflected Light): An Active Vision,” was curated by David Sperber and Porat Salomon, creating a conversation between a series of works and the monumental set of stained windows created by eminent artist Mordechai Ardon in 1982-84 for the entrance hall of the original National Library of Israel on the Hebrew University Givat Ram campus, before the institution moved to its new home three years ago.

The windows are dedicated to Isaiah’s vision of beating swords into plowshares, and 20 artists engaged in a correspondence with Ardon’s work.

Artist Arik Weiss’s staircase is placed in meeting with the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter Hebrew word used for God’s name etched high on Ardon’s window.

Nearby, Andi Arnovitz’s installation of mounted View-Masters, “Isaiah’s Still Waiting,” offers another response to Ardon’s windows, showing black-and-white drawings of iconic moments from the last three years, of former hostage Emily Damari, of hostage’s parents Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin and others, as seen through the lens of the windows.

In another corner, artist Ariana Litman described her search for art after October 7, displayed in her incantation bowl inscribed repeatedly with the date of October 7 and the names of those killed and taken hostage. She also displays gauze scarves stained red, associating the history of gauze, named for Gaza, which was a famed center for weaving and textile trade in the medieval period.

Before visitors walk into the library’s former reading room to view 14 exhibits by a mix of Israeli and Diaspora artists, they’re greeted by Simion Fainaru’s 2023 light box etched with the hopeful words, “Yehiye Tov,” (Everything is Going to Be Alright).

Inside the reading room are 70 self-portraits by Jerusalem artist Matan Sacofsky, part of the exhibit curated by Karyn Gellman, “Exploring Depths,” by this local oil painter and filmmaker who has served multiple rounds as a reservist tank commander in Gaza.

Nearby, an exhibit from Art/Lab, an incubator for artists of the Portland, Oregon, Jewish community, portrays the sense of mourning and the different conversations in the US among Jews as they grapple with a sense of belonging and being Jewish in the US.

In another gallery, Mexican pop artist Alejandro Glatt showed his collection of giant mezuzah scrolls, shellacked and collaged with images that represent Mexican Jewish life and life in the Diaspora.

Artist Kim Goldberg of Omaha, Nebraska, brought her India ink and watercolor swirls manipulated on non-porous paper to show what emerges when certainty disappears. The art form is one that Goldberg has workshopped with Nova survivors in dozens of trips she has made to the region since October 7.

The Old National Library exhibits are just one part of the Biennale; Sasportas’ new video work, “Mishpat Mokesh (A Mined Sentence),” curated by Hillie Wurtman Moyal, will be exhibited at the Tower of David Museum.

Sasportas, a Bezalel Academy professor and artist active in Israel and Germany, created a video and sound installation of clay mines set with sounds from a German forest and Nazi bunker, part of her ongoing exploration of buried histories, trauma, and the possibility of transformation, opening October 12.

Sasportas’ brother, Avi Sasportas, an IDF soldier, was the first Israeli victim of Hamas terror in 1989 when he was abducted on his way home and killed.

Hanita Ilan will present a solo exhibition opening October 15 entitled “Palace (Working Title)” at Hamiffal, inspired by the gallery building, a 19th-century stone structure that sits behind the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, once known as the historic Palace Hotel, with Ilan’s paintings emerging from a surface of photographs and documents.

Entry to Biennale exhibitions is free of charge, with the exception of those venues with an entry fee.