The Grand Canvases of Nirit Takele's Ethiopian-Israeli Experience

Artist Kehinde Wiley, the official portraitist of President Obama, is known for his grand-scale paintings of people of color. Wiley has described how empowering it was when, as a boy, he saw the occasional paintings of black people among the many white subjects that filled the galleries of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “There was something absolutely heroic and fascinating about being able to feel a certain relationship to the institution and the fact that these people happen to look like me at some level,” Wiley has said. Artist Nirit Takele hopes that her work, peopled by members of her Ethiopian-Israeli community, will have a similar impact.

This month, Tel Aviv’s Hezi Cohen Gallery is holding Takele’s first one-woman show. Within less than a week, all but one of her paintings had sold. Takele, a master of color, fills her paintings with blues, greens, browns and reds that are simultaneously comforting, bold and demanding.  But once those colors have captured your attention, look again. She has a lot to say about what it is to be an Ethiopian- Israeli.

Continue reading "The Grand Canvases of Nirit Takele's Ethiopian-Israeli Experience" at...