Nirit Takele: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate, A Time for War and a Time for Peace

Nirit Takele: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate, A Time for War and a Time for Peace

By Ron Bartos

Nirit Takele is one of the most prominent artists in contemporary Israeli painting. Over the last decade, since graduating from the art department at Shenkar in 2015, Takele has become a painter with a personal voice, a distinct language, a sensitive perspective, and powerful expression. Furthermore, Takele's work is created with a significant cultural and social vision: like other artists from the Beta Israel community, she articulates in the first person and in real-time the modes of representing Blackness and the multifaceted appearance of dark skin — a new path in the history of Israeli art.

Takele's painting, A Time to Love and a Time to Hate, A Time for War and a Time for Peace, was created for the "Hive" project. It is divided into 25 square sub-paintings, following the structure of the hive cells (five by five). A first glance at the painting reveals several key layers: the general composition and color palette are based on the Israeli flag (the horizontal stripes, the Star of David in the center, and the light blue color). The upper frieze shows a war scene, including soldiers and combat helicopters; in the center, there is a large, somber, and elegiac social scene. A closer look at the painting brings attention to smaller details: a white peace dove in the center of the main painting within the hive, as well as additional light blue doves; yellow ribbons scattered throughout the 24 sections of the painting, symbolizing solidarity with the hostages; a figure holding a chain with a military dog tag — another symbol of the solidarity in this time of war.

The painting's language is direct, its title is well-known, its sources are clear, and its meanings are straightforward. It is a timely painting that blends personal and collective expressions with feelings of empathy. Pain and loss, as well as hope and pride, are symbolized here in simplicity, a simplicity familiar from Zionist posters, Israeli graphic design, and social painting traditions from the early days of the state.

A third, deeper look, identifies the more refined, personal, and subtle values of this monumental-historical and direct-contemporary painting: notice the couple (on the left, in the background) — two civilian figures within a military group, two figures of hope contrasted with a group of mourners. These are also typical figures found throughout Takele’s body of work — large, archetypal, dark-skinned figures (here in light blue) representing and monumentalizing the Beta Israel community. Moreover, note the light blue stripes of the flag and find within them the traditional geometric patterns inspired by Beta Israel textiles; and the light blue itself, a color that floods the painting, revealing the basic gestures of Takele’s painting language (try, for example, to view one of the squares as a painting in itself, rather than as part of the overall composition), the light blue that plays such an important role in Nirit Takele's art.

Before Operation Solomon, which brought Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the painter's family undertook a long journey to a transit camp in Addis Ababa, where they waited for several months. A nearly solitary childhood memory of this journey still accompanies Takele today: she remembers herself as a six-year-old girl standing on the river bank. If we wish, we can anchor the significance of the light blue in that childhood memory, in the sight of the river water that her young eyes still remember. The light blue is the space from which the painting migrates, from it and to it — a painting on the river bank. There is a symbolic sentiment at this moment, encapsulating the entire migration experience through the river crossing. Takele’s art carries this Rubicon-like moment in all her paintings, including this one.

Ron Bartos is the Chief Curator at the Negev Museum of Art in Be’er Sheva. He curated the "Nirit Takele: Chromatic" exhibition held at the museum in 2023.

The title of the painting is based on the words of Ecclesiastes. See: Ecclesiastes, 3, 8.

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