Foto Friday – Nigeria-Tel Aviv

August 28, 2009 - 12:33 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, coexistence, Food, Foto Friday, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Music, Travel 

Nigerian festival 4The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria celebrated the Tel Aviv Centennial this week with a festival of arts, culture and cuisine. The festivities, which will culminate on Sunday, included Nigerian gourmet meals prepared under the direction of Chef Charlie Fadida, executive chef of the Tel Aviv Sheraton hotel, together with the dynamic Janet Olisa, wife of the Nigerian Ambassador and a team of Nigerian culinary experts. This came in addition to performances, at the annual Jaffa Nights festival, of traditional African music, song and dance performed by troupes from Nigeria.

Nigerian festival

Nigerian festival 2

Nigerian festival 3

Victor_Politi_3The festival also included the opening of a photography exhibition, “Nigeria Through the Eyes of A Passerby”, by Victor Politis. An award-winning photographer and entrepreneur, Politis is founder and CEO of PRI, an international project development and financial advisory company with a focus on emerging markets. His business travels have also afforded him the opportunity to explore his passion for photography and documenting an ever- globalizing world. More about Politis can be found here.

Victor_Politi_1

Victor_Politi_2

The Nigerian Festival Week includes a film festival featuring the best of “Nollywood“. The Nigerian movie industry, it transpires, is the third largest in the world in terms of number of films produced annually. I did not know that! The festival is held under the auspices of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the Nigerian Friendship Association and other organizations from Israel and overseas.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yekutieli’s observations know hope

August 20, 2008 - 8:11 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, General 

Know hope on a wallStreet artist Adam Yekutieli, 19, was born in California, but he soon moved with his artist parents to Ramat Hasharon, where he recently completed studies in a fine arts high school.

Yekutieli’s chops were honed as a subversive spray-painter, proliferating tags like “Please Believe” and “Know Hope” in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel. Since then, according to a recent profile in The Forward, his work has evolved considerably:

Though Yekutieli began by spray-painting and posting long blocks of text, he has come to prefer a “less bold” aesthetic that solidifies his message into shorter, more easily read bites. About two years ago, he started what he calls his “library project,” in which he pasted drawings and phrases on the street with double-sided tape, inviting removal. On the wall behind the pieces, Yekutieli wrote, “I let you borrow my heart for a while but others borrow it as well.”

In the past year, Yekutieli has worked almost exclusively on site-specific installations that bring his “character” – as he calls the figure at the center of his work – to life in cardboard 3-D. In these installations, the character interacts physically with the surroundings, climbing across Tel Aviv’s landmarks or feeling out crosswalks as if they were Braille.

Sophisticated stuff for a spray-paint-happy teenager. But defining himself as “primarily an external observer,” Yekutieli believes that his preoccupation with the cold and temporary nature of urban existence doesn’t necessarily make his subject matter dreary.

And in terms of specifically Israeli themes to his work, it all comes down to context. On the one hand, Yekutieli says that politics are so saturated in the minds of the Israeli street-walking public that he doesn’t want his installations to fade in to the white noise, but on the other hand, social commentary (albeit more universal than regional) is at the heart of what he’s trying to do. “I want to address the human conditions that compose the political and social issues,” he told The Forward.

Universal, heady messages with subversive executions apparently yield international appeal, as Yekutieli currently has four formal overseas shows on display through the autumn, at noted venues including San Jose’s Anno Domini, London’s The Gallery in Cork Street, West Hollywood’s Carmichael Gallery and Stavanger, Norway’s edgy Nuart Festival.

Tags: , , , ,

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap