Three artists, three questions: One year since Oct. 7

Pain has infiltrated art. The atrocities of October 7 have affected all sectors of Israeli society, including the art scene. Israeli artists have not desisted from creating, even after donning their reservist uniforms or being evacuated from their homes – as is the case of the artists I am presenting this week.

After the initial weeks of the war, when all the major museums and galleries in the country were still closed (and precious art pieces had been stored away in sheltered spaces), Israel began to experience a flurry of grassroots art show openings, followed by dozens in the succeeding months. In addition, Hostages Square in front of The Tel Aviv Museum of Art became a natural stage for artists.

Israeli artists have been showcasing the ongoing horror taking place around us and becoming the voices of those still held hostage who cannot yet speak for themselves.

Three artists who were evacuated from their homes after October 7 agreed to answer my three questions:

1. What inspires you?
2. What do you call art?
3. What, in your opinion, makes your artwork different from that of other artists?

Daphna Wysokier Dishi

The artist and art therapist was born in 1977 in Moshav Sde Nitzan, a small agricultural community in the Negev desert. She lives and creates in Moshav Talmei Yosef.

After completing her IDF service, Daphna Wysokier Dishi lived in Australia for 13 years, where she earned a BA in fine arts from Monash University and an MA in art therapy from La Trobe University, both in Melbourne. Back in Israel, she continued her education under the tutelage of artist Ziva Yalin at Sapir College in the Negev, completing advanced studies in drawing and painting.

During her years in Australia, Wysokier Dishi longed for the desert landscapes of her childhood. The artist had always been drawn to the silence and stillness of the land and captivated by its earthy colors and rough textures, and she later explored these in her paintings. Her preferred medium is acrylic paint, which she uses in several ways: layered, scratched, spilled, and sponged.

Wysokier Dishi combines abstract art with figurative style. Over the years, she has had solo and group exhibitions in Australia and Israel.

“My last exhibition before October 7 was in the gallery at Kibbutz Be’eri. Two weeks after the exhibition ended, the gallery burned down,” she said. “On October 7, we (together with my three kids) were luckily saved, and after staying for 36 hours in a bomb shelter, on the 8th we had to flee the area.”

She and her family relocated to Moshav Paran in the Arava desert for 10 months, finally returning home in late August.

“I grew up near Gaza and continued to live there and raise my family. I returned to my small community in the Eshkol region, which is still shattered. We all knew many people [here] who were murdered or kidnapped. But this is my home and I’m glad I am back, close to the people I love the most, holding the pain with them, joining them in their pain.”

During the year of the war, she has continued painting. Asked whether her art had changed over the year, she responded: “Definitely, yes. I find that the colors I use are softer and less vibrant, and there is a certain depth in the content and in the way I use my brush strokes. I think my art is more fragile now.”

In October, Wysokier Dishi will participate in two exhibitions near Gaza: “The Sun Did Not Stand Still” at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai (opening October 8; curators: DuArt – Shlomit Oren and Lilach Shmul); and “After the Ravage” at Tziurim Art Gallery in Kibbutz Urim (opening October 10, curator: Etsy Gang). Together with other artists participating in these shows, Wysokier Dishi wants to convey the message of solidarity and rebirth to the world.

• INSPIRATION: “This question would have been answered differently before October 7. The division of these two realities reflects so much of my life and, therefore, also of my art. I usually paint intuitively. When I have a strong feeling deep inside [of me] that something needs to come out creatively, [art is] the only language that this emotion speaks and the only way it can release itself into the world. So, I guess, the current answer is [that my inspiration comes from] the overloaded external reality in which we live and its effect on my internal emotions.”
• MEANING OF ART: “Art, for me, is when my heart awakens and creates movement inside me. When my heart is the part that is listening, that sees, feels, or smells. When something is created from the heart, it always reaches another heart.”
• WYSOKIER DISHI’S ART: “My art is an extension of myself in a creative form, the difference [between it and someone else’s art] is that it comes from me, not from anyone else. I aim to give visual expression to the connection between pain and growth by creating images and textures that are emotionally expressive and touch on both suffering and enlightenment. I would like to touch as many hearts as I can with my art, and thus to inspire others.”

On Instagram: @daphnadishi

Nitzan Peled

An English teacher at Nofei Habsor High School and a self-taught artist, Nitzan Peled has been a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri for 27 years. Born in 1967, she grew up on Kibbutz Nirim. Up until the war, art was her side activity.

Today, whoever goes to Hostages Square cannot remain indifferent to Peled’s and Gidi Galor’s installation Overwhelmed, made from metal and wood fashioned into the form of a female face. The work on the display started before the outbreak of war and was completed as it raged. Now it also includes audio, with a recorded story of Oct. 7. 

“We built it thinking of the Midburn event, which was meant to take place in November 2023, 4 km. from the Supernova party location,” she said.

“I never thought it would receive sound, light, and the message it did. I never imagined that it would go on the journey of an evacuee and tell the story of Be’eri and of October 7,” said Peled, who was evacuated from Kibbutz Be’eri together with one of her three children (the two others don’t live on the kibbutz). She finally returned this past July.

“After we were evacuated, I realized that it [the installation] had also survived, and I knew it had a story to tell.” Peled asked her friends from Midburn, the Israeli Burning Man community, for help. They rescued the installation from Be’eri in the heat of the war, at the beginning of November 2023. The installation was moved from Kibbutz Be’eri to Moshav Arugot, where she and artist Gidi Galor completed the work. From there, the installation began its journey across Israel, first to Kibbutz Ga’ash, then to the Or Gadol exhibition at the Jaffa Port, and eventually to Hostages Square.

Peled highlights the power of unity in the work on this project, which soon became one of the strongest voices of the massacre’s survivors.

“My friends and talented artists gave us [the use of] a workshop to finish welding. They created lighting and graphics, and recorded my voice; they synchronized sound for it and turned [it into] an experience that triggers all [the] senses. Everyone who helped us volunteered to echo the message, to tell a story that must not be forgotten.” The display has set out on a journey aimed at retrieving those who were kidnapped. This journey is not over yet. “When all the hostages return and the residents of the Gaza border communities also return to their homes, the installation will also return to Be’eri,” she said.

• INSPIRATION: “What sparks my imagination or motivates me to create are my partners at work; artwork; and living beings.”
• MEANING OF ART: “It is the connection created between the artist and the viewer, evoking feelings and thoughts.”
• PELED’S ART: “I strive to create works that capture a moment and tell stories or convey a complex hidden emotion.”

(Nitzan Peled does not have a public social media profile.)

Yaara Rabinovitch

The multidisciplinary artist, born in Rehovot in 1986, completed her education in architecture (BA, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem) and in product design (MA, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen). As such, Yaara Rabinovitch explores various aspects of architecture, art, and design while focusing on the creation of practical handmade objects, using molding techniques. She creates installations and handmade tableware using various techniques and materials, but she specializes in glass and ceramics. “I also teach glass design at the Tel-Hai Arts Institute.”

The war has turned her life upside down. We made several attempts to meet for this interview throughout the summer, but the artist kept sending messages about rocket bombardments and the “chaotic situation in the North.”

Eventually, we met remotely instead.

For the last three years, Rabinovitch has been a resident of Kibbutz Amir in the Upper Galilee, near the Lebanon border, having moved there from Tel Aviv. She had found her place: a home and her art studio. Since her evacuation on October 7, she has been “searching for a place to build my temporary life.”

“I kept my studio at Kibbutz Amir as an anchor to return to,” she noted, “but I constantly travel between the Center and the North, driving for hours between homes, even amid the chaos of bombings, to keep creating and pursuing my art.”

Not long before the war, on August 31, 2023, Rabinovitch inaugurated her first solo exhibition “Stack,” at the Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center. Due to the war, the gallery remained closed for about a month. Operation Swords of Iron has impacted the way the artist now works: “I’ve had to reduce the number of ceramics projects I’m doing because the firing process is time-consuming and challenging under the current circumstances. Instead, I’ve been focusing more on basalt projects. Basalt allows for more immediate expression, and working with it gives me a sense of connection to the ground of my home, even though I’m far away.”

Nevertheless, Rabinovitch presented a powerful installation titled No Address at Fresh Paint 2024, the art and design fair. (“This installation was commissioned by KETER for the Fresh Paint fair, 2024. It includes plastic and lightweight materials, alongside ancient basalt stone from Majdal Shams, treated through collaborative work at Kibbutz Amir.”) No Address seems like a deconstructed, destroyed home, but as the artist said, it also “shows home as two-dimensional raw material, a mere potential: a plan for realization in an optimistic future.”

Another of her wall installations (Untitled, a grid of nine ceramic plates) was just presented (September 19-22) in New York in an ArtUp Nation group show of Israeli artists, curated by Keren Bar–Gil.

• INSPIRATION: “I researched the use of plates, breaking free from their traditional context. For me, a plate symbolizes a foundation, a path, and a future. I see the plate as a two-dimensional sketch, using circles and lines to create endless shapes. Stacking them into towers reveals the material’s inherent three-dimensionality.“My artistic language emerges through the round shapes and varying heights, using modular casting for flexibility. The resulting assemblages stand as freestanding sculptures or reliefs in space.”
• MEANING OF ART: “Art is a form of expression that transforms and reinterprets objects to reveal new meanings. For me, it’s about exploring and communicating the essence of everyday things and their potential, beyond conventional uses.”
• RABINOVITCH’S ART: “As a multidisciplinary artist, with a background in architectural and product design, my work uniquely blends these disciplines. I create sculptural objects using ceramic materials such as plaster, clay, basalt stone, and glass, approached through both drawing and modular casting. This fusion of design, architecture, and craftsmanship sets my work apart, distinctly.”

yaararabinovitch.com 