If the Walls Could…

Illustrating Street-Poetry at Alfred Gallery

Participating artists: Ayelet First, Elisheva Kessel, El-Ad Cohen Kenigsberg, Efrat Bronstein, Dganit Rodovski, Danit Menagem, Daria Dubrovin, Tania Kantor, Leia Kaprov, Maya Gonen, Meytal Offer, Noga Kara, Noa Mosheiov, Niyati Froind, Nurit Laor, Anat Axelrod, Shirley Waisman, Shalhevetya Zis, Ravid Shirazi, Raz Aviram Shomrat, Rachel-Adaya Scheffer, Tomer Zait, Tamar Lev Eliyahu

Street poets: Anna.R. Ky (Adi Ron), Hila Sheleg, Nachi Weiss, Tamara Lilach Mezuman, thingineversaid, Dina Segev, Yuval Ido Tal, Eli Shreim, Itay Drukman, OREN AILAM

Photography: Itay Frost, Nissim Maoz (for Hila Sheleg), Oren Ailam (for OREN AILAM)

Curator: Liora Grossman

Producer: Efrat Levin-Yoffe

Graphic Design: Raz Aviram Shomrat

17.11.22-26.11.22

If the Walls Could…Illustrating Street Poetry at Alfred Gallery 

The exhibition “If the Walls Could…” addresses the connection between illustration and text. It presents a selection of illustrative interpretations of 11 street poems sprayed throughout the streets of Tel Aviv, as well as one poem, “Sweetie-Darkie”, by Nachi Weiss, sprayed in Jerusalem. There is a very wide spectrum of street poetry – from simple, two-line poems all the way to layered, complex poetry. Sometimes it even receives an illustrated reaction on the wall itself, by other graffiti artists. Street poetry operates on the immediate level: read, understand, take it in and move on. The poems are only as long as it takes to spritz them and run. 

By definition, illustration is a narrative art that visually communicates an idea, word, joke, statement, notion, article, essay, story, and on rare occasions – a poem. A poetic text is the most difficult to illustrate, because poetry – in its illusive way, confronts the reader with its sounds, between the two covers of a little volume, which one reads within their most intimate room. Yet street poetry appears outdoors, exposed and kicking. It is read while walking and invites readers to gulp it up. Street poetry has a wider visual context: building entrances, trash cans, cars, the murals around it…In fact it is a kind of poetry that possesses the form and presence of visual art.   

The Mearyrimim group has removed the poems from the street, redirected the glance to the words, and illustrated the spot where the poem catches them. These are twenty-three illustrators, ten poems, and the expanse gaping between them. 

Graffiti poets are not “regular” poets – they create on the boundary between permitted and forbidden. Some create their own personal typographic language in order to convey a message: Dina Segev punctuates her poems with plant shapes; thingineversaid emphasizes words by coloring them red; OREN AILAM uses Hebrew “nikkud” (diacritical marks used to represent vowel sounds) in his poems, and he works in several hues; Tamara Lilach Mezuman adapts the design to the surface on which she works. Among the poets chosen to participate, just one is not a definitive street poet: Yuval Ido Tal. A fan who fell in love with his book “Poems by Ogawa Yokimitzu” spritzed a segment from one of his poems on the street Simta Plonit.    

The exhibition displays 11 large placards printed on tarp, featuring photographs of the street poems. The illustrations associated with each poem are displayed alongside the poem. Most of the photos were taken by attorney Itay Frost, who currently works as a criminal prosecutor and moonlights as a documenter of graffiti in the streets of Tel Aviv.   

About “Meayrimim” 

“Meayrimim” is an online school of illustration, established during the pandemic by Liora Grossman and Efrat Levin-Yoffe. At Meayrimim, students can learn the profession of illustration on a high, comprehensive level. They can also build or strengthen the foundations (many students hold academic degrees in design and art), study the connection between word and image, and receive guidance for creating a first book. Online studies on Zoom enable diverse and widespread participation by people living outside of urban centers or abroad, the hearing-impaired (Zoom enables simultaneous viewing of the lesson and sign-language translation) and the disabled - all of which would not be possible if participation required leaving home. Online instruction brings together people from different cultures and backgrounds, who would not normally meet, yet despite this have become part of a thriving community, which views Meayrimim as its artistic and professional home.   

 

Liora Grossman is an illustrator, recipient of the Anderson Medal. Grossman is a researcher of Israeli illustration, curator of illustration, and the founder of the illustration workshops for the Arab sector at the Hkaia center for education & culture (R.A).   

Efrat Levin-Yoffe is a producer and production manager in the fields of music, theater and television. Levin-Yoffe has worked with Israel’s top artists (Rita, Noa (Achinoam Nini), Dana Berger, Avtipus).

Exhibition Events:

1. Festive opening and film screening

“If the Walls Could…” - Dina Segev and Liora Grossman talk street poetry

Thursday, November 17, 19:30 

Photography and direction: Edi Tapiro, Editing: Studio Gimel 2, Production: Efrat Levin-Yoffe, Equipment loaned by: Noam Aviram

The film will be screened throughout the exhibition. On the evening of the opening, prints of works by the illustrators participating in the exhibition will be available for purchase.  

2. Paper cutting workshop with Meital Ofer

Saturday night, November  19, 17.00-20.00

Cost 150 NIS per person, the workshop is for adults only. Tickets can be purchased at the link : https://link.meayrimim.com/cutout

Maximum participants: 15 people. 

Holding the workshop is conditional on pre-registration of a minimum number of participants. Duration of the workshop:  3 hours.

Meital Ofer is a member of the “Meayrimim” community and is a paper artist, who masters various techniques of creating with paper (without the use of color). In the workshop we will learn about the creation of illustrations in cutting, positive and negative, and other techniques for working with paper.

3. Graffiti-poetry tours with Dina Segev and Liora Grossman

Tour price: ILS 100 per participant

Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 10:00

Link for ticket purchase: https://link.meayrimim.com/grafitti_1

Friday, November 25, 2022 at 10:00

Link for ticket purchase: https://link.meayrimim.com/grafitti_2

The tour starts with a meeting in the gallery where stories about illustration and poetry will be told. Then the tour will leave the gallery for the streets of Tel Aviv. Dina Segev will talk about the sources of street art and street poetry’s place as a subversive and original genre in the world of graffiti. 

4. Open class: illustrating poetry with Liora Grossman

Monday, November 21, 2022, 20:00  

Entrance is free. Email registration is required: efrat@meayrimim.com 

Illustrating poetry is one of the hardest challenges an illustrator faces. Poetry is “fluid” and takes the form of whoever reads it. An image for poetry is always just one possible version – the illustrator’s version. In the class, poetry illustration works will be presented from around the world, as well as from the exhibition and from Liora Grossman’s artist book project for the poet Diti Ronen. The class will include a practical exercise anyone can do, and a lecture.  

5. Lecture: “Street Language” – on graffiti and street art with Dina Segev 

Wednesday, November 23, 2022, 20:00

Entrance is free and registration is not required. 

The city “speaks” to us in the language of graffiti. Yet, most of us do not speak “Graffitese”, and don’t really listen to it either. Together, we will delve deep into the categories of texts in the world of street art and discover that sometimes the city asks us philosophical questions or presents political protest. Sometimes it “speaks” to us in an incomprehensible, secret language (and we will learn what is said there, and why there is no need to understand...). And sometimes the city’s walls become a “poetry book”.

Dina Segev is a street artist. She writes poems in public space and is connected to most street artists active in Israel, as well as to numerous international artists. She is a participant and curator of street art projects, guides tours and workshops and lectures on street art in Israel and abroad.    

6. Gallery talk: “What Was the Illustrator’s Intent?”  

Saturday, November 26, 2022, 20:00

The exhibition’s curator, Liora Grossman, will lead the gallery talk. The exhibition’s illustrators will conduct a dialogue with its poets – about how words are generated, the encounter between word and illustration, “correct” interpretation and the gap between what the poet intended when they wrote the poem and what came out in the illustrator’s illustration…