Three artists, three questions: The 9th Biennale for Drawing in Israel

Drawing isn’t always the main interest of artists, but it is the skill that allows them to develop other forms of artistic expression. Drawing is something most of us learned early in life, so we consider it very basic in artistic education or development.

Since 2001, the Biennale for Drawing has been produced by the Jerusalem Artists’ House and its director, Ruth Zadka. This year’s theme, Slough, was curated by Tali Ben-Nun. The Biennale is being held across four venues in Jerusalem: the Jerusalem Artists’ House; Ticho House; Jerusalem Print Workshop; and the Koresh 14 Gallery.

The exhibitions can be seen separately or on the same day, taking the viewers on a fascinating journey to the world of drawing. I did it the second way, receiving the entire feast on one plate.

The selection of 77 artists from over 600 Israeli artists, who responded to the open call, is inspiring. Their various approaches to drawing – some traditional on paper, others oscillating between sculptures and installations – show how drawing can be a rich experience.

I was especially drawn to the works that, in my perception, were very clean, nearly pure, and in some way referred either to language or movement. I decided to feature three artists from the Biennale in this month’s column, who answered my three questions:

1. What inspires you?

2. What do you call art?

3. What makes your artwork different from that of other artists?

After her army service, she studied at Hamidrasha’s Faculty of Arts and graduated in 1982. She continued her education in literature at the Open University. Literature stayed with her, inspiring her visual art works.

Over the decades, Figovich Goddard has had solo exhibitions and has participated in several group shows. In 2019, she was awarded the Culture Ministry's Prize for Encouragement of the Arts.

Her recent work focuses on drawing, using both classical and self-made materials such as ink diluted in seawater and rust-infused water. She often draws on simple paper. “It’s notebook paper and some oily stick on it, and the black lines are ink pens,” she explained

In her drawings, she often merges human figures with architectural landscapes. Her works are also filled with subtle humor.

When I saw her untitled drawings at the Biennale, one of the series she is presenting at the Jerusalem Artists’ House, I was intrigued by the stories behind them, the mirrors that look like faces.

During our interview, she agreed that they looked like faces; however, her intentions were different. “I was thinking about mirrors that reflect nothing; a mirror that cannot serve its own purpose, as an illustration, I have never seen.”

Figovich Goddard said that she drew the figures/bodies attached to the table, as they were part of creating a united structure. The thought of a form, she said, often comes to her during yoga practice. “The yoga mat is like a piece of paper,” and the movement she experiences while exercising, she often transfers to her art.

“Different kinds of texts move me – whether it’s a single word or a phrase I stumble upon as I listen to the world around me. Sometimes I extract them from what I am reading at the time – usually poetry or prose, both contemporary and classical; I write them down in my notebook for safekeeping.

“As I studied literature, and I continue to do so, books were always a part of my work, both as the starting point or the inspiration, and as the material itself on which I act.

“Another source of inspiration is yoga, which I have practiced for 32 years. Yoga teaches me an important lesson in composition, in the quality of relations between different elements.”

“I no longer ask myself this question, mainly because I don’t need an answer. Any answer limits the possibilities and brings about conceptions that minimize, and the minimal is only good as a working tool, and not as a world view. On the other hand, my life revolves around the studio. I usually work in the mornings; that is my routine.”

This multidisciplinary artist and poet was born in 1987 in Ramat Hasharon, and for many years has been based in Tel Aviv. He said that he had been drawing and painting since an early age, and also as a young adult during his military service.

“I was an IDF sergeant, and I was in the Second Lebanon War during my service. I never stopped painting.” So it was natural that after the army, he went on to study fine arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, graduating with a BFA in 2016 and an MFA in 2020.

Danino, in different forms of art, explores the relation between Hebrew text and visual image. Working across painting, drawing, textile, video, sculpture, performance, and writing, he investigates how personal and collective traumas shape language, and how breaking the structure of language can develop into visual expression.

When asked what comes first to him, visual art or poetry, he replied that it is a combination of the two. He said that his interest in Hebrew letters and Jewish holy books began when he was seven. Growing up in a secular family, he discovered Jewish prayer books and Torah alone when he entered a nearby synagogue.

He returned multiple times, purposely getting lost in text, waiting for someone to lead him. That opened him to visual images evolving in his mind from the Jewish religious texts. This fascination with Jewish words and texts has been impacting his art to this day. Letters became drawings in his hands.

“The main source of my inspiration is the Hebrew language – its ancient roots and its contemporary, everyday use. It can be a line from a poem, a verse from the Bible, or even a random conversation.

“In recent years, I’ve been exploring the tension between Hebrew text and visual image, and how both personal and collective trauma shape the language we use. I’m interested in the moment when language breaks, when trauma becomes too heavy to express in words, and in that silence a visual image begins to form.”

“For me, art is not a representation of reality. It’s the moment when our everyday tool, language, reaches its limit, and there’s a need to express something deeper, something that’s hard to put into words.

“It’s like seeing a breathtaking landscape for the first time. In that moment, there are no words that can describe its beauty, and even if I try, the words and descriptions can never truly convey what I see.

“That, to me, is art; the moment I look at something and feel as if I’m seeing it for the first time, when it moves something within me that I don’t yet know, and language is no longer enough to express the visual experience.”

“My work is rooted in language. I use words not only for their literal meaning but also as raw visual and emotional material. Sometimes the text itself becomes an unreadable image, and at other times it transforms into new visual forms. Through this process, I expand the boundaries of language and its representation, giving shape to what cannot be expressed in words.”

The body movement in her works stems from her background in dance. “Before becoming a visual artist, I was a contemporary dancer.” In her experience, dancing was more goal-oriented, and visual art gave her freedom.

“Inspiration for me is something very internal – like a spring of water rising from deep underground. When the pool starts to fill up, that’s my signal to begin creating.

“There are things in the outer world that help spark that inner flow; movement, for example. Dance, yoga, walking. When I go wandering around Arad and the desert landscape around it, that movement connects me with the world outside – with images, memories, smells, sounds, materials – and, of course, with myself.

“During these wanderings, a bit like Pippi Longstocking’s ‘Thing-Finder’ game, I look for and collect materials that draw my attention – little treasures from the ground: porcupine quills, peacock feathers, stones.

“In the installation I made for the Biennale, presented in the Print Workshop, the flint stones [attached to her drawings] were collected from a quarry near Arad. I later discovered they had been carried by a river from Jordan to Israel long before the Syrian–African Rift was formed.

“These stones give the fluid, watery drawings a sense of grounding and solidity. The flint brings into the figures – which appear from stains without a specific gender, time, or place – the desert and the specificity of the land from which they came.”

“Anything created with a genuine intention to be art and that evokes any emotion. For me, art is a way of making sense of the world. In the currents of everyday life, I often drift, unsure of what is asked of me or how one is meant to navigate what’s called ‘real life.’ But when I create or experience art, those outside voices fall away. In that space, I’m the one who shapes the world and writes its rules.”

“Art reflects the soul; so, like a fingerprint, no two are ever the same. The fact that I live in the South, in the desert, is quite rare in the local art world. My environment influences the imagery and materials I use. I remember my admission interview with Yair Garbuz at the Hamidrasha Art School. I’ll never forget the look of surprise on his face when he opened my sketchbook and found it full of drawings of camels, which I used as models.

“If I return to the theme of bodily movement, when the body is in distress, the past two years have been a horrifying testament to what happens when that neglect takes hold.”