Two artists from different sectors and cultures, Nava Harel-Shoshani and Issam Darawsheh, take part in this exhibition. Their shared criticism of society and the establishment is their point of connection. Both attempt to stir up unrest and protest through their art, expressing dissent with the current state of affairs.

“Taking to the streets” (a direct translation of the exhibition name in Hebrew) is a concept that became widespread at the onset of the Arab Spring revolutions and has since turned into a daily, routine act—like going to a movie, grabbing a coffee together, or strolling along the promenade. Fueled by anger and frustration, and by the exhaustion of accepting a reality spiraling toward an abyss, people chose to take to the streets: to revolt against corrupt governments, to rap, to paint graffiti, and to support one another through a shared belief that reality can be changed.

This is also the case with today’s protesters against corruption in Ramat Gan and Tel Aviv. We now witness masses of Israeli citizens taking to the streets to demand equality and social justice, and to reshape reality.

Nava Harel-Shoshani

Nava Harel-Shoshani’s works in the “Taking to the Streets” exhibition are part of an ongoing body of work, Tzamud-Metsiut (“Reality-Attached”), titled Warning Signs. These are digital works—manipulated traffic signs, primarily those that are meant to warn. The artist intervenes in their content, disrupts, alters, and replaces elements to express her personal concerns and critiques, particularly in the socio-political sphere. She repurposes familiar icons to give them new meanings, sometimes incorporating provocative content meant to shake viewers and jolt them out of their habitual thinking.

Her goal is to refresh fixed perceptions, prompting viewers to question things they’ve taken for granted by understanding the gap between the original traffic sign and what it has become. The new signs she creates invite deep reflection on Israel’s social and political situation, and serve as sharp critiques of corruption and the erosion of human values.

In parallel, she attempts to develop a personal sign-language by combining and hybridizing materials and ready-made objects—many of them symbolically charged. Removed from their original context, these objects are infused with new or altered meanings through their recombination. In this visual language too, she responds to the world we live in, expressing protest and ironic, sometimes humorous, criticism through her newly formed objects.

Issam Darawsheh

Issam Darawsheh’s figures do not testify and do not protest. Their identifying features are erased, embedded, or removed. The artist fixes them at the forefront of his work, thus freezing them in a state of eternal existence. This serves as an allegory for the condition of Palestinians everywhere—whether under Israeli or Palestinian Authority rule, living in the diaspora and exile, or surviving as stateless individuals in refugee camps across Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.

What does the erasure, absence, or assimilation of national identity mean? What was the artist’s intention? What was he aiming for when he erased facial features in one painting, or replaced the heads of figures with those of domesticated animals in another, all set in a bleak and shadowy atmosphere?

Darawsheh’s characters seem to clash and scuffle with one another, in hidden virtual screams. They’re entangled, prickly, confrontational. Perhaps they mirror the artist’s own identity—shaped by his human surroundings and yearning for a real, not virtual, message that will liberate his people from the upheaval shaking the land. They search for human values that can unite people under the shared moral umbrella of God common to all humanity.

Some of Darawsheh’s works are created in graffiti technique. He brings graffiti—street art born in unregulated public spaces—into formal, institutional settings. He recruits the language of the street, with all its connotations, and domesticates it onto the white surface where the rules of fine art apply. Graffiti is usually a drawing or inscription sprayed or painted on walls, public property, or private homes—often without the owner’s consent, and therefore considered illegal.