Jerusalem, if you can get past the light rail construction morass, epidemic of skyscraper construction, and the less alluring sights of this increasingly sprawling city, has much to offer in terms of pure aesthetics. I, for one, am enamored of the back streets in the area of Shlomzion Hamalka and Shushan streets, and the maze of infrequently trod thoroughfares behind the main post office, all a stone’s throw away from the Old City.
Right now, there is even more to look at and appreciate at the ninth edition of the Outline Festival, the annual salute to the oft-neglected art form of illustration. The festival opened for business on November 21 and will run through to December 19, with Lital Marcus Morin serving as artistic director for the second year.
The calendar slot means – should you have some time off over the Hanukkah period, and the weather is kind – you might want to stroll along the city streets to spend a few minutes considering some of the work of the dozens of artists, feted and less familiar alike, that adorn buildings, walls, galleries, and museums all over the downtown urban show. There are also a number of venues outside the city center.
That Outline is making headway in the public sphere and among the art world establishment is indicated by the inclusion of more illustrious arts repositories in the festival circuit, such as the Israel Museum and the Knesset Museum. “Actually, we’ve been collaborating with the Israel Museum for quite a few years,” notes festival director Ronit Bekker Blankovsky. “We don’t normally have exhibitions there: We have events there.”
And quite a happening it is, too.
What's happening at the 2025 Outline Festival?
“This year, there is an event in honor of an illustrator whose work every Israeli grew up on – Alona Frankel – and they still do,” says Bekker Blankovsky. Now the 88-year-old Polish-born Holocaust survivor Frankel has also penned several dozen beloved children’s books – which, naturally, she illustrated as well – such as Sir Hasirim (“Potty of Potties”); The Moon and the Stars; and Prudence’s Get Well Book.
This will be about more than just getting an appreciative eyeful of some of Frankel’s creations close up. We will also get some insight into how she went about putting together those gems of Israeli culture. “Rutu Modan, a well-known illustrator herself, will interview her at the museum,” Bekker Blankovsky adds. “There will be a night of making illustrations, and live music. It should be a wonderful time for everyone.”
AMONG THE festival’s manifold benefits, there is the simple and potentially game-changing fact that ordinary folk – who, in the flow of their everyday rat race life, may not find the time or even have the inclination to make their way into a museum or gallery to consume artworks from close quarters – can enjoy some of the exhibits without straying from their regular beat.
Take, for example, the Black Box outdoor display facility in the plaza in front of the Clal Building. As the Present Passes is a collection of works by Ziv Sameach that feeds off and feeds into Jerusalem urban street life. His characters, illuminated in their display boxes, comprise a hypersensitive polychromatic world in which the figures commingle and separate, and morph into a grotesque carnival of humaneness, spanning broad arcs of emotion from compassion to aggression, and bridging the divide between fantasy and reality.
That comes across as one of the more hard-hitting slots on this year’s Outline roster. “Ziv’s works are very emotive and intriguing,” Bekker Blankovsky observes, adding that there is more to be had on Jerusalem street level. “There is also the exhibition of Maya Ish Shalom at Safra Square.” That one officially opens at 7:30 p.m. on December 1, under Marcus Morin’s steady curatorial hand. The exhibition is called Birkat Shalom, which translates as “Greeting,” although the word for “peace” – and its clear inference – in the title can hardly go unnoticed. “They are beautiful works,” the director notes.
The Ish Shalom spread takes in posters created during the seemingly endless latest war in Gaza when, as the festival blurb has it: “It felt as if the very word ‘peace’ had emptied of almost all its meaning.” The posters that will be arranged around the square examine the idea of peace as a domain of emotion and consciousness rather than a political stance or ideological goal. That sounds like an inviting and healthy way to go about things around here as we continue to lick our wounds and try to resume some kind of normative way of living.
Marcus Morin’s curatorial line of thought talks of works that offer a new way of approaching “closeness, listening, and presence as an opportunity for a different kind of dialogue, without intermediaries between a person and their domain, and between individuals.” If we can take a look at Ish Shalom’s works – as we pass through the center of town, and get a sense of even a part of those sentiments – we might find ourselves in a better, calmer, more empathetic state of affairs.
THE PUBLIC domain figures front and center at various junctures across the Outline layout, thereby drawing the quotidian urban aesthetics into the living and breathing artistic equation. “That also applies to the Knesset Museum,” Bekker Blankovsky says. “It is part of the Outline philosophy, to step outside, catch people who may not be accustomed to consuming art, and offer them an opportunity in all sorts of public spaces to enjoy the art.”
That is clearly integral to the project credo. “Many of the exhibitions offer free admission, so even if some of them don’t take place in the public domain, people can just pop into a place and enjoy the art, with ease.” The latter include the Beita Center for Art and Design in the City, located on Jaffa Road, up from the Mahaneh Yehuda market, where Bekker Blankovsky serves as center director.
Osi Wald’s animation set there, her debut solo offering, feeds directly off the violence in Gaza and seeks to pick a way through the dense emotional layers, and powerful feelings and thoughts sparked by the war. The show title Lights All Askew in the Heavens alludes to her choice of base subject matter, which references an astronomical event that took place over a century ago which, she feels, resonates a contemporary ethos which is anything but normal.
That also echoes this year’s thought-provoking central festival theme, Unusual. “That comes from the last period of time we went through, and all the upheavals and the great changes,” Bekker Blankovsky says, adding there was heartfelt intent to keep things on a positive track. “We wanted to avoid the ‘un,’ anything negative in the title, but in the end, with all the tumult of the recent past, we felt we had to give a place in the festival to the negative side, too. This is not a usual time.”
That one is open to some discussion. With all the political, security, and sociopolitical tremors that have washed over us all in the past five years or so, with COVID-19 and its cataclysmic disruption to life here, the social unrest as the protest movement seethed and spread to unsettle the powers that be – which, post-Gaza war, has now resumed – and the horrific events of Oct. 7 and their painful aftermath, perhaps, sadly, all the bad stuff is not that “unusual.”
HISTORICALLY, MUCH of this country’s musical and cultural core is based on the military scenario, acts of heroism under fire and the brotherhood of soldiers, seasoned with a heady helping of Zionist ideology, or patriotism if you please. But art, in its various guises, is there to upset the societal apple cart, and to raise subject matter that does not, possibly cannot, be expressed by any other means.
“We relate to the past two years, the very extreme things that took place here. We have to ask questions,” Bekker Blankovsky believes. “The medium of art enables us to broach topics that otherwise are more difficult to discuss. That makes it possible to highlight areas that defy words: very tough things that we feel in Israeli society but can’t put into words.”
Hence, among other vehicles, Outline. “The artistic platform can sometimes simply lay out challenging issues so they can be displayed and analyzed.” That, Bekker Blankovsky feels, helps to avoid minefields and political divides by allowing us to relate to the proffered work as we see fit. “Then it doesn’t spark arguments. The work is just there to be taken or left as you want.”
Illustrators, she says, can help to convey messages in eye-catching and more accommodating ways. “Art speaks, and it comes from the emotion, and it suggests a different way of looking at the world. Illustrators, who are well schooled in supporting texts, are able to express things in very clever and sensitive ways.”
That is a leitmotif of Outline, which takes in solo and group or collective shows that meander across expansive cultural, philosophical, and historical tracts. The Bible Lands Museum, a newcomer to the festival lineup of venues, naturally dips into days of yore with a collection of works by Anat Warshavsky and Danna Shamir that draw on the long history of printmaking, and also cite the aesthetics of ancient seals from Mesopotamia.
“[Curator] Shua Ben Ari went into the museum space and asked herself how she can delve into early eras, bring contemporary sentiments into the ancient world, and follow the ebb and flow movement [between eras].” This was not just a matter of Warshavsky and Shamir running a practiced artist’s eye over the ancient artifacts and using their appearance as a springboard for their illustrative craft.
“The illustrators employ the techniques used to make the seals,” Bekker Blankovsky explains. “It is a sort of exhibition within an exhibition. They bring those techniques into the present day; it is a lovely set.”
THE OEUVRE of poet and popular author of children’s and adults’ books Nurit Zarchi gets a mammoth salute, with How Strange the Dream Was from the Ilu artists collective at the Hutzot gallery on Jaffa Road opposite Safra Square. The recently opened Knesset Museum on King George Street hosts a humoristic spread that addresses the lighter side of political life here. Some of the latter will be screened on the outside of Froumine House so that passersby can enjoy them without overly breaking their stride.
Other venues worth a visit include the Bezalel Academy, Miffal Gallery, Slovak Institute, and Shacham Gallery, which has an interactive event for patrons.
Besides providing illustrators with a richly deserved major stage once a year, Outline also helps to boost the local economy, as well as the capital’s national profile. “People come to the festival from all over the country,” Bekker Blankovsky says. “People have been coming to Outline year after year.
“But the festival is, of course, mostly for Jerusalemites. It is a very big festival which takes over lots of galleries and museums.”
There’s more. “We also run free guided tours that offer people a deeper understanding of the art,” she adds. “And there are lots of family events on Hanukkah, with hands-on activities, workshops, and such.”
There’s plenty to see and do around Jerusalem, indoors and out, over the next three weeks.
For more information: outlinejerusalem.com/about-2021- outline-festival/?lang=en