Department of Photography
המחלקה לצילום
قسم التصوير الفوتوغرافي
David Adika is a photographer, artist, and Head of the Photography Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. A senior lecturer in the Department of Photography since 1999, he holds bachelor’s (BFA) and master’s (MFA) degrees from Bezalel.
David Adika’s work focuses on the visual and cultural facets of the local Middle Eastern space as a microcosm that reflects his social and family identity. His photographic corpus contains representations of various still life and portraits, blurring the boundaries between abstract conceptual language and lavish visual accuracy. Adika’s visual research explores intimate yet universal biographies, while the photographs unfold familiar and unfamiliar aspects of everyday life and highlight questions of taste and social status.
Adika has had many solo exhibitions in Israeli and international venues, among them Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Art Museum in Riga, Latvia, Bologna MUSEI, Casa Morandi, Italy, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, and Braverman Gallery in Tel Aviv. He has won many awards, including the Minister and the Emerging Artist Prizes from the Ministry of Culture and Sports, and the Jack Nailor Award for Photography. His photographs are included in many collections, such as the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Haifa Museum of Art, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Casa Morandi in Italy, the Knesset and private collections in Israel and abroad.
He lives in Jaffa and works in Jerusalem
Dr. Ravid Rovner is an academic and curator in the field of design, with a focus on the convergence of design history, theory, and philosophy. She holds a B.Des in Industrial Design and a PhD in Philosophy. Her scholarly contributions to design theory explore diverse topics such as the history of originality, the idea of ‘truth to material’, critical design, and gender design. Rovner wrote the curriculum for the Israeli high school diploma in design, “Aspects of Design History”.
She has curated exhibitions on object poetry and rhizomatic mind mapping, a research technique instructs as a tool for research innovation. Her forthcoming book on “Beit Hayotzer” ceramic factory promises to illuminate the invention of tradition through ceramic design. At Bezalel, Rovner teaches design research, rhizomatic research, critical design, and gender design.
Chaya Ruckin, born in 1984, lives and works in Tel Aviv; holds an M.F.A from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, received an Asylum Arts grant in 2015.
Ruckin’s practice combines video, photography, sculpture, performance and drawing, through which she explores the relation between body and object, in the everyday environments and the exhibition space. In her work she raises the question: Where does life come from? The question is not a scientific or religious one, but rather what drives us forward and upward even as we are counting down to death from the moment we are born.
Ruckin has participated in many exhibitions, festivals and cultural events in Israel and abroad, among which: the Tel Aviv Artist Studios, Barbur gallery Jerusalem, FIAC International Contemporary Art Fair, Grand Palais, Paris; the Center for Digital Art, Holon; the Queens Museum, New York; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and more. Ruckin has participated in the Asylum Arts residency program (New York, 2014) and the Beita Residency (Jerusalem, 2014)
