Harel Wahnish and Daniel Kep Are the Winners of the Michael and Pauline Lockman Memorial Scholarship

Harel Wahnish and Daniel Kep, students in the Master’s Program in Fine Arts, are the winners of the Michael and Pauline Lockman Memorial Scholarship in the amount of 15,000 NIS in the fields of local Israeli, Jewish, and/or Judaica art.

From the reasons for their win:

Daniel Kep
“Daniel is an artist with a unique and developed artistic style. He delves into questions of Jewish identity in its local contexts, and draws inspiration from traditions and religious texts which he examines with a contemporary sensibility. His investigation moves between the concrete and the universal, and between image and action. His works depict living bodies, often in motion and in subtle tension with the constant and the changing, thus hinting at the potential for disruption and even collapse of religious rituals and living tissues. His works speak clearly and deeply, and through the appearance of the self, give expression to the cultural contexts in which the self is embedded. The works engage with the possibility of a contemporary culture that is linked to Jewish traditions, giving them surprising actualization.”

Harel Wahnish 

“Harel is a mature and articulate artist whose work deals with the possibilities of actions with and in relation to the Hebrew language. He does this through actions that take place in several mediums, in the tension between the desire to belong to Jewish tradition on the one hand and the drive to create in an autonomous and even idiosyncratic way on the other. This tension rests on Harel’s place in a religiously diverse family and his attitude towards it – in belonging to and being separate from it, as a safe haven and a launch pad to another place. In his work with language, he seeks to first ‘absorb’ it and then from it to create new objects and spaces – while activating the symbolic and representative space of tradition. For him, the Hebrew language is one of Creation and Revelation, but also of creativity and invention.”