The 9th National Drawing Biennale Presents 'Impressions IX - Shedding'

The 9th National Drawing Biennale, held under the auspices and production of the Jerusalem Artists' House, has established itself since 2001 as a comprehensive and unique artistic enterprise. The current Biennale, like its predecessors, takes place at the Artists' House and in additional exhibition spaces in the city center: Koresh 14 Gallery, the Jerusalem Print Workshop and Ticho House. Chief Curator: Tali Ben-Nun. The Biennale is presented from 8.11.2025 to 7.2.2026.

In the Biennale, which bears the name "Impressions IX: Shedding", 77 artists are presenting, chosen from more than 700 creators who responded to the open call. The participating artists and hundreds of works on display are a continuous celebration of the medium of drawing, in its many manifestations, and present the directions of contemporary drawing practice.

The theme of the Biennale, "Shedding": deals with the act of drawing through the concept of shedding from the animal world - one of the most fascinating and mysterious phenomena in the animal world, the moment when a creature sheds its old skin to grow anew. The shed is both an end and a beginning. Similarly, drawing itself is sometimes considered the "beginning" of a work, the initial sketch, and sometimes as a "final" and complete product. The concept of shedding allows artists to look at current, spiritual, human and political issues through drawing. The exhibitions in the various exhibition spaces refer to this idea and present a wide range of works that demonstrate the power and relevance of the medium of drawing today.

The Ninth Drawing Biennale: Shedding - Jerusalem Artists' House:

The main exhibition at the Jerusalem Artists' House bears the name of the Biennale, "Shedding", and examines the genre of drawing in relation to the phenomenon of shedding in the animal kingdom - a process of shedding an old shell to allow growth and change of shape. The shed symbolizes the end and the beginning as one; This is a moment when a line is cut and a layer is unraveled, and the drawing body bears witness to the raw, to the "not yet being" before shape and name. Drawing is perceived as an instinctive action in which lack of planning, mistakes and randomness leave traces of memory on the substrate, and turn elusive thoughts into raw material.

The exhibition spreads across all the spaces of the Artists' House and is based on three main cognitive planes: Death: works in which the drawing of the end of life is evident, and remains testifying to vitality that existed in the past are etched as fossilized signs. Death seeks to continue to exist in objects, stones and tombstones. Day-to-day: drawings that are traces of the soul and routine - quick sketches, drawing diaries and random actions of hand and thought. These works document and distill the personal handwriting of the artists, and serve as a compass also for sculptors who are not strictly drawing artists. Spirit: works that seek to give shape and presence to what existed and faded - secrets, hidden sediments and invisible phantoms. This plane expresses the human need to suspend death and revive memory and lack.

In addition, the "Between and Between" space presents sculptures and objects located on rafts as homeless nomads, and symbolizes the transition between life and death. The exhibition as a whole strives to open a window to the latent and the hidden, and takes place on the stretched bridge between ERES (poison) and EROS (love), where the "shedding" operation takes place - the transformation of form.

Participating artists: Leah Avital, Yochai Avrahami, Maya Aton, Nivi Alroy, Gilad Ashri, Sharon Etgar, Nitzan Ben Zimra, Eden Bennett, Eitan Ben Moshe, Yitzhak (Itche) Golombek, Noa Glaser, Flora Dvora, Yosef Joseph Yaakov Dadon, Drora Domini, Yaakov Dortchin, Omri Danino, Shams Hawari-Zoabi, Masha Zussman, Shahd Zoabi, Hadas Hassid, Shahar Yahalom, Shay Yehezkaeli, Reut Yeshayahu, Reuven Israel, Chen Cohen, Shiri Knaani, Uri Karmeli, Dana Lev Livnat, Kinneret Haya Max, Hila Toni Navok, Inbal Nissim, Morsan Nandahaji, Pesach Slabosky, Shi-Li Uziel, Naama Amar-Hadani, Eli Patel, Dorit Pigovich-Godard, Yaara Tzach, Idit Kupski, Talia Keenan, Gabi Krichli, Yosef Krispel, Gilad Ratman, Zamir Schatz

Photo 356 = The 9th National Drawing Biennale 9 presents 'Shedding'. Photo Shosh Lahav

Ticho House - Shedding: Fragments of Memory - A solo exhibition by Yael Atzmony, Curator: Tamna Zeligman:

At Ticho House, the artist Yael Atzmony presents the installation "Shedding - Fragments of Memory" (curator: Tamna Zeligman). In the center of the space are a series of porcelain maps created by Atzmony following research on the master plan of the Sobibor extermination camp, which also includes a drawing of her father, a survivor of the camp. These maps are made of delicate and fragile material and embody a paradox: some are flat and prone to breakage, and others are rolled up and sealed, with the information encrypted in them. The broken porcelain serves as a metaphor for a traumatic, fragmented and fragile inherited memory, for histories that have been cut off and for the experience of displacement. Atzmony's works do not describe memory in a didactic way, but echo it through a tactile language, inviting the viewer to feel the emotional weight of the past, and proving that history is also preserved in fragments.

The Print Workshop - Shedding: The Peel of the Inanimate and the Living - Curator: Tamar Gisfan-Greenberg:

The exhibition at the Jerusalem Print Workshop focuses on "shedding" as a metaphor for the act of printing itself: the process in which the printing plate, on which the image is created, becomes a "shed" - an empty shell charged with memory after the final work has been transferred to paper. The exhibition presents 21 artists who examine the charged relationship between the body and the shell that surrounds it, and the one that has been shed. The artists deal with the envelope of things, whether it is the human shed through memory and vulnerability (as in the works of Michaela Mor and Raisel Perchunok), or the "peel of inanimate things" (such as Ayelet Hashachar Cohen, who strips buildings from the environment, and Meital Katz Minervo who presents cigarette packs as silhouettes of houses).

The works present a variety of mediums: from installations that use materials that have gone out of use and received new life (such as a rolling shutter or scraps of works by Yasha Yosef Rozov), to works that focus on the texture of the surface of the paper and leather. In particular, etching plates and wood cutting surfaces are displayed - the sheds that remain after printing - as valuable art items containing the memory of the artistic action and the deliberations that surrounded it.

Participating artists: Yael Burshtein, Nirvana Dabach, Tamir Chen, Carmit Hassin, Shadi Touafra, Elia Cohen, Ayelet Hashachar Cohen, Meital Katz-Minervo, Tamar Levinson, Michaela Mor, Rachel Frumkin, Raisel Perchunok, Jonathan Tzufi, Mosh Kashi, Yoav Raban, Tamar Rodded Shabtai, Yasha Yosef Rozov, Yael Ruchman, Vania Shaub, Alma Shnior, Dafna Shartiel

Koresh 14 Gallery - Shedding: Remnant - Curators: Dvir Shaked, Vered Hadad:

The "Remnant" exhibition focuses on the concept of shedding - what is left behind. The snake's shed, an old life shell, is a metaphor for a tangible record of the past, growth and transformation, containing within it both a lack of necessity and immense documentary importance. The shed is also embodied in the human body as scars and wrinkles, and in society as collective memory and trauma. The participating artists - including Miriam Kabesa (who paints on art books), Noga Schatz and Tamir Lichtenberg (in a one-time monotype), Revital Lasik (who deals with peeling skin as a childhood habit and mythological memory), Ron Asulin (in modular sculpture that registers movement in space) and others - commemorate through drawing a moment, a thought or a movement that was and is not, and place the remnant as a unique testimony to the course of life and time.

Participating artists: Midad Eliyahu, Ron Asulin, Elia Ben Ner, Doa Basis, Boaz Barkani, Yael Yudkovik, Miriam Kabesa, Tamir Lichtenberg, Revital Lasik, Galia Hili Pasternak, Noga Schatz

The Biennale is presented from 8.11.2025 to 7.2.2026.

To the Biennale website: www.art.org.il

Photo 934 = The 9th National Drawing Biennale 9 presents 'Shedding'. Photo Shosh Lahav