About the work

This drawing deals with the Shekinah. The Shekinah is a recurring theme in my work and is described as ‘the glory of the divine presence, conventionally represented as light or interpreted symbolically in Kabbalism as a divine feminine aspect’.

The art work is an allegory of the Shekinah, who guards a war stricken man and its presence symbolises the relationship between the female aspect of the divinity and divinity itself. The golden pearl necklace is the female divine. The work expresses a woman’s struggle in a peace-less terra.

Date and country of birth

1975, IL

About the artist

Born 1975 Tel Aviv, Yifat Bezalel lives and works in Tel Aviv. Graduated from BFA at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (2002).

Throughout a two-decade journey, Bezalel has established a unique practice of superimposed semi-transparent layers of figurative and realistic images to create surreal settings, pencil drawings which are erased as they are drawn. Her large-format drawings are often part of fragile installations, combined with video works and sculptures.

Bezalel’s practice is inspired by wanders in theological-philosophical fields. Jewish culture charges me with an abstract form at once primary and supreme. Renaissance sculptures and drawings provide me with narrative aesthetics, I turn them into my private mediators, revelling in their beauty.

Her works are in public and private collections worldwide including Deutsche Bank Art Collection, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv; and Wirth Private Collection, Hauser & Wirth gallery, London.

Selected exhibitions include Drawing a New World, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London(2019); Women in Dialogue, Alys Tomlinson and Yifat Bezalel, Duc in Altum, Magdala (2019); Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2019); Another world, Charity Postcard sale curated by Tracy Emin, Deutsche Bank Lounge, Frieze Art Fair, London (2018); Tehila, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art (2017-2018); A Pit Talk, artgenève art fair, Geneva (2014); Motherless, Drawing Now art fair, Paris (2013); Personal Structures, Palazzo Bembo, Venice Biennale (2013); Alice in Wonderland, Tate Liverpool, touring to Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto and Kunsthalle Hamburg (2011-2012); Conclusion of a Timeless Tale, VIDA Museum, Borgholm (2012); The Gate of Unknown, 1st edition of The Others art fair, Turin (2011); Vitam Impendere Vero, Gowen Contemporary, Geneva (2010); and Paper Works, Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem (2009).