Aza’s Guernica by Raida Adon Below: 7 October by Maayan Guri;
Left: artwork by Shirel Horovitz from the series After
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then on, I didn’t put the red marker down.” In the months that followed, Horovitz gathered work by other artists responding to the attacks, eventually compiling an online presentation, What Does Shock Look Like. The images were stark and powerful.
In the first week of October 2023, Shirel Horovitz had been in Tunisia, visiting a friend and fellow artist. She’d arrived back in Israel on 5 October and was beginning to get back into her Tel Aviv life when, on the morning of 7 October, she was awoken at 6.30am by the sound of sirens. She, along with the rest of the country, soon understood that something uniquely awful was taking place, but it has taken weeks and months to process the emotions from that terrible day. When she eventually started to reflect on those feelings, it was natural to do it through the medium of art.
One painting, Curving Road by Ziva Jelin, was created before 7 October and shows a landscape saturated in red. Jelin lived on Kibbutz Be’eri and the painting was in her studio there when
Hamas attacked, killing 112 residents. The canvas now features bullet holes and shrapnel damage across its surface. Other works contemplate Israel’s military response, such as Urban Planning by
“The first thing
I did was take a marker and fill a page with red”
Horovitz, who specialises in installations that incorporate etchings, sculptures, video and sound, usually avoided referring to contemporary events in her art immediately after they happened. But after picking up her sketchbook in late November, she began to produce work irrevocably linked to the Hamas attack. “The first thing I did was take a marker and fill a page with red,” she says. “I was guided by a need for movement, to do something. I’d never really used red before but from
Daniel Shohan, or Aza’s Guernica [Gaza’s Guernica] by the Palestinian and Israeli artist Raida Adon. A piece by Oren Fischer reflects on how Israeli artists felt they were perceived by the international community.
Now, some of Horvitz’s work and that of other artists featured in her presentation is being shown in an exhibition, October Seventh, which is curated by Carmit Blumensohn at Anu Museum of The Jewish People In Tel Aviv.
PETER WATTS: What was the art scene like in Israel before 7/10? SHIREL HOROVITZ: Israeli artists do thought-provoking, interesting, dramatic and tragic very well, but we aren’t so good at light, fun or comic. The political aspect is always present.
Before last October, artists were engaging with the political atmosphere, in particular, the protests against judicial
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