Illustration involves a constant, and constantly updated, reliance on cultural icons. Illustrators must challenge the viewer’s critical eye, expand the contexts of images that make up visual culture, and layer a single image with a variety of complex meanings. Zeev Engelmayer (b. 1962, Israel), Keren Katz (b. 1986, Israel), and Lilach Raz (b. 1971, Israel) transpose classical works to the Middle East, to settings such as the beach and local buildings and rooms, which means that the local Want of Matter tendency is evident in their illustrations. They seek not to accurately reconstruct iconic artworks (or, heaven forfend, history itself), but to cite and present a free and humorous interpretation of them.

Another aspect of the exhibition is the artists’ constant struggle to secure a place for illustration and comics in the artistic arena, in the canon and discourse of art. Thus, the photographic version of the famous paintings enables the photographed figures, all members of the illustration community – fellow artists, teachers and students, veterans and upcoming – to tell another story, not only about the “documented” historical event, but also about the nature of the medium and the place of the community in the field of art.

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