The Patt Café operated from 1922 – 1956 in the renovated Helmsley Building, where the Hadassah Academic College’s Azrieli Gallery is located. The exhibition “Layer Cake” corresponds with this nostalgic chapter in the building’s history and draws a link between the two mediums of illustration and photography. The gallery windows have been distributed between students in the culinary photography course in the Department of Photographic Communication at the Hadassah Academic College and illustrators who specialize in culinary illustration. The students selected illustrations from local children’s books and cookbooks and translated them into photographs overflowing  with color and imagination. The illustrators, in turn, translated the students’ photographs back into the illustrated medium, adding their own layer of personal interpretation, stemming from their individual style.   

 A group exhibition by 13 illustrators to mark the 100-year anniversary of the death of Eliezer Ben Yehuda. Each exhibition participant selected a word from the list of words coined by Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and illustrated it based on their own personal interpretation. This is an illustration exhibition with a typographic emphasis, and therefore the illustrators were asked to include the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in their illustrations.

Different sequences, behavioral cycles, conscious and unconscious rituals, those who want to break free and make a change and those who want to keep things exactly as they are. Patterns create a fabric; they build routine and invite change. 

This year, the exhibition of Jerusalemite illustrators addresses a personal interpretation of “behavioral patterns”, life’s big and small patterns and the molds that exist within us and in the world. 

Six creators who are graduates of the Bezalel Department of Visual Communication present a visual interpretation of the same place, twice: once a quick peek, without looking at the margins or what is happening; and again through extended observation, capturing a story. In between two works that return to the same place – time after time – changes, gaps, misses and longing reveal themselves.

The exhibition is displayed along two walls on either side of the tunnel leading from Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station to the Yitzhak Navon train station. It presents a fascinating tapestry of sights

 Repetition is humanity’s superpower as well as its tragedy. Inherent in repetition is the ability to overcome and start anew, along with the tendency to never learn from mistakes.

The series of illustrations created by Einat Tsarfati examines the small details from which big subjects are comprised and examines what repetitions are made of in the relationships between humanity and nature, and in family, war and love. The series offers a viewpoint which is both pessimistic and optimistic at the same time, on the mistakes we keep repeating over and over again since the dawn of time.

In the exhibition, various areas of life are examined as a stage: a childhood memory in Tel Aviv, relationships within the nuclear family, a couple’s fantastic bedroom, as well as a panic scene in a historic theater hall. All these serve as a set, as scenery for an occurrence in which the viewer can act. “Open rehearsal” is a concept borrowed from the world of the stage. Just a moment before the play opens officially, in its refined state, the audience has exposure to the preparations, the doubts and uncertainties, the mistakes and everything that happens “behind the scenes” in the window of time when changes can still be made. The exhibition’s audience is invited to become a stage worker or actor in a show that takes place in highly emotional territory, whether familiar or unfamiliar. Through enacting a role in someone else’s scene, the exhibition raises questions about recurring and new role playing in our personal lives.

In a world that is constantly changing, and with an unstoppable pace of life, we each lose something every day. In this exhibition we will pause to observe things we have lost and things we have found. Sixty-five illustrators from throughout Israel present the concept of losses and being lost through 80 illustrations, from each illustrator’s point of view and heart, in which they give the viewers the opportunity to find themselves in this open call exhibition.

Shmuel Katz – one of Israel’s pioneers of illustration and caricature – followed the sun. He traveled throughout Israel and illustrated the country’s landscapes and people. Katz was responsible for several of Israel’s iconic cultural treasures: from “Hasamba” and “Room for Rent” to “The Wild East” and “Follow the Sun to Israel” and more. His illustrations are characterized by a light hand, humor and use of a variety of techniques. The exhibition presents works by Katz alongside works by contemporary illustrators, all of whom show their own view of Israel.

In the world of construction and architecture, there is criticism of residential neighborhoods with their anonymous buildings and apartments, the kind that looks like the result of generic reproductions which fail to address the public’s differing and changing needs. On the other hand, it can be argued that replication creates security, stability, order, organization, quiet, and a sense of calm. As part of Outline Festival 2022’s focus on Jaffa Road, a group of talented illustrators selected parts of the chaotic, noisy, busy, and diverse Jaffa Road, and brought them inside the white and quiet gallery located right on street level, in an organized and repetitive pattern, turning the gallery space into a kind of continuation of the adjacent train station. They thereby arranged and organized the street’s chaos without losing its character and creativity. 

A giant monster, accompanied by a colorful flock of creatures, has invaded the gallery space of Hansen House, filling its rooms with their cheerful stampede. Orit Bergman and Anat Warshavsky, in a new collaboration, alongside selected illustrations from the children’s books that they created, celebrate the spirit of children: games, humor, imagination, and color.

The exhibition hosts a reading room inviting the whole family to dive into a world of books and

Sasha Naumov is an illustrator, graphic designer, animator, artist and musician active in Jerusalem. His illustrations are characterized by infantility, naughtiness, originality and joy of life. In a large illustration that mixes together past, present and future, Naumov depicts a different Jerusalem, taken from a fantastical imaginary reality. Children visiting the Jerusalem Puppet Festival will color in the illustration, which will be displayed in the festival’s outdoor area. The final illustration will be hung in the city center during the Outline Festival.

Gadi Pollack was a pioneer of ultra-Orthodox illustration and comics. In 1993 he immigrated to Israel from Russia, discovered Judaism and adopted a devout lifestyle.

The blossoming of ultra-Orthodox illustration goes hand in hand with the success of Pollack, who has a repertoire of over 50 illustrated books which became best sellers in different languages: Hebrew, English, Russian, Yiddish and more. In a rich, realistic style that contains layers of interpretation as well as a cryptic dimension, Pollack integrates as his tools quotations from the art world alongside Jewish content, thereby changing the rules of the game of illustration in his sector. Pollack wisely passed on his legacy in a unique school he opened in Kiryat Sefer (Modi’in Ilit), called “Course in Academic Drawing of the Artist Gadi Pollack”.  For the first time, this exhibition brings together artists who were his students, as an homage to the master who opened the world of drawing up to them, within the world of tradition. 

According to a Talmudic legend, when King David dug the foundations of the Temple, he dug too deep until an abyss opened up and its waters rose and threatened to flood the world. To bring the groundwater back below the surface, David threw a note with the Tetragrammaton in the depths, and the abyss descended to 16,000 feet. But then the water was too far away, and the world was in danger of drying up. To balance destruction and construction, David stood at the mouth of the abyss and played 15 melodies for the 15,000 feet, until the water reached a height of one thousand feet.

The illustrators featured in the exhibition were invited to illustrate images that will comprise a series of Melodies to the Abyss. Illustration after illustration, they will break through the layers and delve into the chaotic depth and power of the abyss.

The exhibition features a collage triptych (a work consisting of three panels) created by Tamar Lev-On and displayed in the windows of Beit Saidoff on Jaffa Road, near Beita Gallery. The triptych focuses on the historic Jaffa Road, which leads from Jaffa Port to Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City Wall. Displayed on the main bustling street of Jerusalem, the exhibition travels between periods and dreams, architectural plans that go off the rails, human fragments, and flora and fauna elements. The triptych is a reflection of a complex and fascinating inner journey, and at the same time, it is also a collective historical journey that delineates a road between cities and between periods. The use of symbolical and charged images linked with the local cultural space allows passers-by to feel as though they are walking the same path in which the Jebusites, Romans, Mamluks, Ottomans, Britons and many others have walked before them.

At night, the silent wood furniture in the room remembers it used to be a tree in the forest. When you look carefully at the objects in the bedroom, they awaken from their slumber. Suddenly, a portal opens in the familiar reality, revealing the path to the forest, to a scary and captivating subconsciousness. This is a space that embodies the hidden and repressed possibilities of existence.

In the exhibition at Beita Gallery, Itamar Paloge “FALUJA” and Ophra Eyal expose the memories that once inhabited the tree, the beings hiding in its shadows that wish to come out of the thick, wild, ancient darkness and into the light and the normalcy of quotidian routine and the now. What will emerge from there to the domestic space and from it to the space of the gallery? Mythological hybrids that appear in different cultures, forgotten or familiar fairytales. The creatures and figures are given a new and updated treatment, on the line that reconciles the ancient and hidden with the contemporary and visible.

One year ago, the Society of Jerusalemite Musicians initiated the ‘Console’ project, connecting over 50 poets and musicians in Jerusalem. At first, poets and writers worked side-by-side in a writing workshop, emerging with a series of poems. These were put to music by a selection of composers, who transformed the texts into songs – which were performed, recorded, and gathered into a compilation album.

The Dojo, a multidisciplinary art center in Jerusalem, took the project one step further, incorporating visual artists who illustrated the various songs – giving each one a visual interpretation. The result is Hand Me Down, a collection and exhibition of poems and images printed using a unique technique, engaging all senses with the combination of imagery, music and poetry. Perhaps the final stage of this project has yet to be seen, if someone inspired by this multidisciplinary collaboration decides to take it yet another step forward.

Over the last year, illustrator Assaf Benharroch cultivated a small vegetable patch on the kibbutz where he lives. The patch is an intimate meeting point with nature, with oneself, and in a way also with the kibbutz community. In the vegetable patch, he experiences the incessant change of the circle of life in nature: The rapid growth and abundance of vegetable plants, the change of seasons, the encounter with wildlife (that also enjoy the vegetables), the diseases, pests, and death that comes sooner or later.

The exhibition features four poems in the spirit of Haikus, describing the agricultural experience and special atmosphere in the vegetable patch. The holistic view formed in front of the viewer – poem, illustration and the relationship between them – wishes to describe this intimate and personal experience in the most complete and fullest way, on the busy street leading to Machne Yehuda Market, of all places.

Shaare Zedek House was inaugurated in 1902 and served as a hospital until 1980, when it became the Israel Broadcasting Authority headquarters. In 2021, the New Spirit Association moved into the building, turning it into a vibrant artistic and cultural space. The exhibition “Waiting Room” presents a contemporary tribute to the historic building. 66 artists gave their illustrative interpretation to anticipation and waiting. The diverse themes range from the modest mundane anticipation such as waiting for an avocado to sprout or the kettle to boil, for the bus to arrive or rain to fall, and all the way to expecting a baby, a relationship or a hug.

Animator Gil Alkabetz created 35 loops (motion animation) that explore the theme of this year’s festival: “Layers”. Each loop presents a short, self-contained animated story, exploring concealment and exposure, movement backward and forward, up and down, and other visual and narrative aspects of this theme.

Video artist Arik Futterman teamed up with Gil Alkabetz, and together they created an animated-analogue installation of 36 TV monitors placed at the entrance to the former Israel Broadcast Authority building.

In the same streets where nowadays product managers, coaches, lighting designers, and wellness experts rush to work, tanners, bookbinders, cobblers, and watchmakers used to hurry to their workshops. The 39 crafts, from which the halakhic prohibitions on craft on the Shabbat are derived, are a fascinating range of occupations and activities. With new and surprising visual expressions of these diverse crafts, we will take a closer look at the work world, which on the one hand seems to change all the time, and on the other hand, its foundations remain unchanged from the dawn of mankind. The works are displayed on the Jerusalem Light Railway stations, the “Neural Network” of the craftsman and craftswomen working in the city.

In the late 19th or early 20th century, when an expansive building was built in Jerusalem, it had a definite purpose (private residence, school, or hospital). As is the way of a living city, time after time it changes and with it, the purpose of the building also changes. Jerusalem is a stratified city. But unlike an archeological mound where all the strata are layers that have frozen in time, in Jerusalem the layers continue to accumulate one on top of another.

Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road was inaugurated in 1902 as a Jewish, Ashkenazi and religious hospital, with a synagogue on its entrance floor. In 1980, the management of the Israeli Broadcast Authority moved into the building and operated in it for two decades. In those years, the synagogue was used as a conference room. With the entrance of the New Spirit Association to the building a few months ago, the conference room became the gallery of the Jerusalem Biennale. The exhibition examines this moment in time and space. Illustrators and artists created visual tributes to six buildings in Jerusalem that underwent various iterations, and ended up as display venues where people can admire art.

The current location of the Hadassah Academic College campus used to house Jerusalem’s first biblical zoo. Its founder, zoologist Prof. Aharon Shulov, went to great lengths to bring to the zoo animals mentioned in the bible, like bears and lions, alongside giraffes, kangaroos, and exotic birds that were never seen before in our region.

Articles from the early days of the zoo paint its management as an ongoing battle of Shulov and his team against impossible circumstances and their colorful and stubborn attempt to continue and maintain the first of its kind establishment in the young country. Most articles are not accompanied by photos, but written with a rich, descriptive language. Seven illustrators were invited to open the windows of Azrieli Gallery Lobby to their historical past and reflect memories of the views that were once there.

The exhibition is a personal and common journey of four illustrators from four different areas of Israel – places where the urban space meets the wilderness. Between the mountains encircling Carmiel, through the towers around Jerusalem’s Gazelle Valley, the outskirts of Yeruham, to the smell of the sea from the Haifaite Bat Galim neighborhood, each illustrator will take the viewer on a journey of disassembly and assembly between poignant reality and soothing escapism, unfolding a visual tale of nature, man, and spacetime.

A tunnel, by its very nature, is a closed and demarcated space whose entire purpose is to lead those who walk in it from one side to the other. The exhibition displayed along and on both sides of the tunnel leading from the central station to Yitzhak Navon train station, introduces the question: Do visual images also have two sides? And if so, what is the relationship between them? Is the transition between the different sides of the images a shift from the inside out? From the collective to the individual? From the past to the future? Does the relationship vary from viewer to viewer or is it determined by the image’s creator?

In the Exhibition, six illustrators will take on this question. Each illustrator will present two interpretations that will make eye contact with the image opposite them. These six viewpoints – each from a different time and a different place – will sometimes complement one another, other times whisper to one another, and at times avoid one another.