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

www.davidadika.com

www.instagram.com/dadika/

Image

Yael Atzmony is an artist and potter, a senior lecturer and head of materials in the Department of Ceramic Design and Glass. Atzmony is magna cum laude graduate of Haifa University's Faculty of Art and winner of the Maud Friedland Excellence Award in pottery.

Using a wide range of media (sculpting, illustration, video and installation), Atzmony explores the connection between symbol and place and deals with issues such as memory and material. Her works have been displayed in both solo and group exhibitions in Israel and across the world. Among her solo exhibitions - Periscope Gallery, Benyamini House, the Artists' House in Tel Aviv, Keramik Museum Berlin, Wan Fung Gallery in Beijing and the Ceramic Art and Perception Gallery in Sydney, to name a few. 

Atzmony has taken part in symposia and international artist residency programs. Among them, the Ceramics Symposium in Bechinyé The Czech Republic, guest artist with Amsterdam's Rietveld Academie, guest artist with Burg University of Art and Design in Halle, Germany. In addition, Atzmony is a frequent panelist in the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport's Design Awards.

One of Atzmony's most notable projects is 'Tracing Oblivion,' which displayed in Israel and Europe. The project was based on extensive research of testimonies and map schemes of the Sobibor Death Camp in Poland. One more of Yael's projects is 'Forest Path', wherein she placed objects in the deep waters of Ramla's ‘pool of arches’  site which correlated with a video art piece she presented at the Benyamini House gallery.

Image

Ory Bartal is the head of the Department of Visual and Material Culture in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. Bartal is a Japanologist focusing on contemporary Japanese design including industrial and fashion design as well as manga and visual communication. Bartal completed his M.B.A. in the Department of International Business Administration at the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo in a joint project with the Carnegie Mellon University in the USA He then studied advanced studies toward M.Des. in the Industrial Design department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He completed his Ph.D. at the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Tel Aviv, specializing in contemporary visual culture. His book “Postmodern Advertising in Japan: Seduction, Persuasion and the Tokyo Art Directors Club” was published in 2015. The book deals with Japanese advertising, the connection between aesthetics and contemporary consumer culture and the blur boundaries between branding and art. His second book “Critical Design in Japan: Material Culture, Luxury and the Avant-Garde” published in 2020. This book presents the post-war designers that made decisions and created artifacts that radically altered and reshaped the course of Japanese design history. The book shows how their avant-garde design involves an encounter between postmodern aesthetics, critical theory, and new economic rules operating as a critical sociopolitical agent.

UPNE - Postmodern Advertising in Japan: Ory Bartal

Nitsan Debbi is a product designer and a lecturer at the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design. Through her design work she strives to integrate the past with the future including technology and cultural aspects of design. The theme of Nitsan’s work is based on the approach of observation and study of the present with the goal of forward looking.           

Nitsan works at Naoto Fukasawa Design office based in Tokyo, practices in a variety of fields, such as electronic equipment, furniture and exhibition design. The firm advocates a simple, understated and accurate approach to objects, a poetic design that relates to small but significant moments of our daily life.

In 2011 Nitsan established Studio BET together with Liora Rosin. Studio BET found great pleasure in converting everyday wonders into matter and shape, by integrating old crafts and modern technology in the studio work.

Nitsan had completed a B.A. in Industrial Design in 2008 at the Holon Institute of Technology in Israel and a Masters Degree in Industrial Design in 2011 at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Israel. She received a special award for her research studies at the 'Science of Design' department, Musashino art university, Tokyo.

Graphic designer, creator and head of Bezalel’s undergraduate Department of Visual Communication. Specializes in complex systems design, typography, book design, and branding for public, cultural, arts, and architectural institutions. Founding partner of Studio Gimmel 2, which has been operating in the local and international design field for over a decade and a half. Recipient of several awards, including the DAM Best Architectural Book Award, Tokyo TDC, and the Ministry of Culture Design Prize. Holds a B.Des. in Visual Communication from Bezalel and is pursuing a Master’s degree in the Program in Gender Studies at Bar Ilan University.

Prof. Dor Guez's photography, video, essays, and lecture-performances explore the relationship between art, narrative, and memory. Interrogating personal experiences and official accounts of the past, Guez raises questions about contemporary art's role in narrating unwritten histories and re-contextualizing visual and written documents. In the past 20 years, his studies and artistic work focus on archival materials and photographic practices of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as mapping traces of violence in the landscape. Guez received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University and earned his professorship from Bezalel Academy of the Arts and Design. He is the head of the Master's Program in Fine Arts.

To date, 8 catalogues have been published internationally about Guez's practice. Publishers include Distanz, New England Press, and A.M Qattan Foundation. Guez's work has been displayed in over 40 solo exhibitions worldwide and participated in numerous group exhibitions.

Dr. Gal Hertz is the head of the Visual and Material Culture Department at Bezalel. He is a Germanist and a cultural researcher. His research creates a connection between the history and philosophy of science and cultural studies. He examines the rise of social disciplines around 1900 in the German-speaking world, such as criminology, sociology, sexology, law and psychiatry; This is from an affinity to popular culture, development of the press and media, theater, literature, and art. According to Hertz, the connecting point between seemingly unrelated fields is the establishment of a social order based on a new imagined normative base. Hertz holds a master's degree and a doctorate from the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University, pursued post-doctoral studies at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL Berlin), and taught at both Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After that he was co-director of the research project "Humanities in Conflict Zones" at the Minerva Humanities center, and served as a research and teaching fellow at the Cohn Institute and the School of Cultural Studies at Tel Aviv University. In parallel to his work at the university, he is the editor of "MiNituk LeShiluv" (“From Disconnection to Integration”), an academic journal of the Ministry of Education Department for the Education of Children and At-Risk Youth, in which he is also involved in the processes of training teaching staff and in the development and implementation of the department's approach: therapeutic pedagogy.

Jossef Krispel is an artist, painter, and the head of the Department of Fine Arts at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, where he has served as a senior lecturer since 2006. He holds both Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) and Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degrees from Bezalel. In his work, Krispel raises questions about the definition and the position of a painting in relation to the painted surface, and suggests seeing it as a mask, a screen, a shell, or a coating. He has been featured in many solo exhibitions in Israel and abroad, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Palazzo Riccardo Medici in Florence, the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, and at the Haifa Museum of Art, to name just a few. He has won numerous awards; among them the 2008 Rappaport Young Artist Prize, the 2012 Ministry of Culture Award, and the 2006 Young Artist Award. His paintings are found in many collections, including that of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), and private collections in Israel and abroad. He lives and works in Jerusalem.

Animator and animation director and producer, founder of the Jerusalem based studio Mind The Gap Animation, that focuses on social and artistic issues, as well as independent content. Yael's films were screened and won awards in various festivals worldwide.

Yael also worked as a senior production manager at Walking The Dog studio in Brussels, on projects such as Where Is Anne Frank by Ari Folman, the series Royals Next Door, and The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol by Sylvain Chomet (Les Triplettes de Belleville, The illusionist).

In addition to series and film making, Yael conducts local and international animation and cross-media initiatives, such as Copro Foundation's Animarket – the first international animation coproduction market in Israel; Asif Israeli Animation Festival, part of the annual Animix Festival; Animation and spoken word projects such as Poetry in Motion with Poetry Slam Israel and Moving Words with Arts By The People; and many more.

Holds a B.F.A. cum laude from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem, in the department of Screen-based arts.

Elissa Rosenberg is a landscape architect and associate professor in the Graduate Program in Urban Design, and also an associate professor (emerita) at the University of Virginia, where she taught from 1989 – 2007 and served as Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department. Since relocating to Israel, she has taught at the Technion and Tel Aviv University.  Her teaching and research focus on landscape as a cultural practice and a model for contemporary urbanism, tying together the separate discourses of urbanism, ecology and landscape design. She teaches studios and courses on urban landscapes and post-industrial landscapes in the undergraduate and graduate programs. Her research lies at the intersection of contemporary landscape architecture and urban design with a focus on cultural landscapes, post-industrial landscapes, green infrastructure and mobility. Her recent publications have focused on Israeli landscapes, include Tel Aviv’s seaside urbanism, and the kibbutz as a laboratory for Israeli landscape modernism.

Rotem Ruff is Head of the Office of International Academic Affairs and a lecturer in the Department for Visual and Material Culture. She is also Associate Director at Artis, and has extensive experience in the curation and production of exhibitions, conferences and cultural events at museums and other Israeli and international cultural venues, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Haifa Museum of Art. Ruff is the co-founder and co-director of REACTIK, an International Erasmus+ Jean-Monnet Network, researching EU Cultural Diplomacy and Policy. 

Ruff holds a B.A. and M.A. in Art History from Hunter College, New York. She served on the International Council of the renowned television series Art21 and on the judging panel of the Landau Prize. She currently sits in the Israeli Lottery Committee for the Arts, the International Exposure dance festival, and DocAviv film festival.

Merav Salomon is an international Illustrator and a Book Artist who published over 15 books. She is the founder of Salomon & Daughters books, an independent publishing house dedicated to publishing visual books for adults.

Salomon is a Professor at the VC Graduate program and at the department of Visual Communication. She is one of the founding members of the Art & Design Teaching Centre. She served as the Head of the Illustration studies from 2007- 20018.

Salomon’s artwork have been exhibited in galleries, museums and academies all around the world, such as the Troisdorf Picture-book Museum in Germany, Summerset House in London, The Jewish Museum in Bologna, the Tel-aviv Museum, and more. Her Artist book “The archive of the Hand of Chance” is part of the Israeli Museum permanent collection.

Salomon's work have won many international prizes such as The UK Association of Illustrators Gold medal for best illustrated book 2013, the CA magazine Illustration Annual Excellence award 2016, the Society of Illustrators NY 55th Illustration Annual Gold medal 2015. Her work was published several times in American Illustrators, 3x3 magazine, How magazine, Print Magazine, DPI magazine and more. She is 2014 winner of the Israel’s Ministry of Culture Best Designer awards.

Beside her artistic work Salomon works as an international professional illustrator doing commissioned work ever since she graduated from the Graphic Design department at Bezlal in 1993.

Image

Dr. Shaul Setter, head of the Master's Program in Policy and Theory of the Arts (M.A.), is a lecturer and writer in the fields of art, literature, and theory. He holds a master's degree from Tel Aviv University and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He deals with the relationship between aesthetics and politics, literature and art of the 20th and 21st centuries, political thought, continental philosophy, and critical theory. His doctoral thesis discusses neo-modernist art projects ranging from Europe to Israel/Palestine. His book on Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Genet, and the Palestinian struggle in the 1970s was published in 2021. His articles have been published in academic journals, reference books, and catalogs. For several years, he was the art critic for Haaretz. Since 2019, he has edited “Theory and Criticism”, a journal for theoretical thought and critical review, which is published in Hebrew twice a year by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

Prof. Els Verbakel is a founding partner of Derman Verbakel Architecture and Head of the School of Architecture at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. She was a faculty member at the Technion in Haifa, Columbia University, NYC, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and Princeton University, New Jersey. Els has earned her PhD in Architecture from Princeton University, a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University, and a Graduate Degree in Civil Engineering and Architecture from the University of Leuven, Belgium. She served as the editor of two books: “In Search of the Public. Notes on the Contemporary American City” and “Constellations: Constructing Urban Design Practices” as well as the Architectural Design (AD) Magazine on the theme “Cities of Dispersal.”