Tel Aviv bookstore exhibits Iranian artists' work

"They are very courageous people," says Israeli colleague.

By STEPHANIE RUBENSTEIN
Despite fears for their lives, the work of four Iranian illustrators will be on display at a small children's bookstore in Tel Aviv until July 4. The artists, three men and a woman, are all in their 20s, according to Emily Children Bookstore owner Liat Sagol Kornfeld; each has three pieces on display. The artists' names were being kept from the public, and have been erased from the illustrations, she told The Jerusalem Post. "Anyone who wants to exhibit [his] work should be able to," Sagol Kornfeld said, in an interview last Wednesday. "[The illustrations] are very different, and even though no one knows [the artist's] name, just knowing that in another country, other people are seeing their work, it's everything that an artist would want." The exhibition takes up only one wall in the bookstore, but is a great form of communication between Iranian and Israeli artists, said Yana Bukler, an artist who is a friend of the Iranian illustrators and assembled the works for the show. Bukler and the four Iranians travel to Bologna every year to exhibit their work. After talking with them, she said that they wanted to be able to trade pieces from their collection. "They are very courageous people... It doesn't matter if they are Iranian, Italian or anything else," Bukler said. "They don't hate us and we don't hate them. "It is the politics that make all of the confusion, but we are still people and we want people to see and be exposed to our work." "It is friendship that brought this exhibition here. It's a good start for communication," she said.