I was meant to visit the exhibition "The Spark" by Work Off Art at the beginning of March, but of course it was closed due to the war with Iran. I finally got there in mid-April, and I'm so glad I did. The exhibition was curated by Ya'ara Sachs, who was also behind the groundbreaking Pop-Up Museum TLV, among other projects. As explained in one of the wall texts, the exhibition's title, "The Spark", refers to that very moment when the spark is lit - the force that drives artists and individuals to keep creating, dreaming, and illuminating their surroundings, even in times of personal and collective crisis. It was Sachs's final exhibition in Israel before opening her first international show abroad.
The exhibition is being held in the former Tara factory in Tel Aviv's central business district, once home to one of Israel's best-known dairy companies. Over time, as the dairy industry moved out of central Tel Aviv to other locations, the original factory land became highly valuable for redevelopment.
Before the site is redeveloped into large-scale residential and office towers, dozens of artists have transformed 43 rooms and office spaces into a multi-room immersive art experience. Each room reflects an artist's personal "spark". The result is a rich, colourful journey through video art, installations, sculpture and sound.
Rooms were filled with animals, knives floating in space, and areas packed with hands and furry creatures. There were giant flowers made from pipe cleaners, a music machine powered by a compressor and a party blower, a childhood room seen from a unique angle, a giant aquarium, and a large, ominous block suspended in the air. A personal favourite was Shelly Picha's room, above, where she transformed words, names, and prayers into a calligraphic space of memory and healing.
Rotem Michaeli's "Planted Here" was a soft, colourful space built from pipe cleaners. Tall flowers swayed in a gentle breeze, their constant movement highlighting the fragility of life and reality - in Israel, always, and especially today. The room offered a quiet hope that even what seems fragile and delicate is capable of blooming. It was created in memory of the artist's sister.
This room made my friend and me stop for a moment. At first glance, it seemed to tell a story of pain, of hostages, and of war. But the shadow on the wall revealed a shift - when struggle turns into hope, and hope becomes reality. We left feeling a little more hopeful.
Caroline Attoun's work reflected on how reading sparks her imagination. When she feels uninspired, she turns to books, where even a small detail - a minor character or a single sentence - can suddenly ignite new ideas. For her, reading opens up space for imagination, allowing a whole world to form beyond the written words. The work captured that moment of "falling into" a book, when text and imagination meet and creativity begins.
Studio Plan B (Maya and Max Gat-Mor) created an installation composed of sharp metal knives, suspended in a precise and harmonious structure. "Hanging by a Thread" was created after 7th October and it explored the fragile line between constant danger and moments of calm and beauty.
Sapir Ashkenazi’s room reflected on her teenage years, when she often felt caught between loneliness and connection, and between uncertainty and belonging. To calm herself, she would go to the University Railway Station and watch Tel Aviv's city skyline, mesmerised by the glowing buildings and the sense of something larger than herself.
Kobi Osher's "Through the Fracture" used concrete as a central material. A massive, cracked block appeared to float in space. From within the cracks burst light and richness - symbols of creation, life, and small moments of hope. The piece was clearly a metaphor for the weight and pressure we create in our own minds, which in truth carry no real mass.
Another favourite of mine, perhaps because they used paper, were Natalia Volkov's figures of animals native to Israel. They were built from photographs of everyday moments and familiar Israeli landscapes that inspire her. These ordinary moments of architecture and daily life were transformed into living forms, reflecting both the fragility and resilience of Israel's landscapes and the rhythm of life within them.
A number of artworks were displayed in the factory's courtyard. Anna Kogan created an anamorphic sculpture from everyday objects, which from a single viewpoint revealed a portrait of Elon Musk. The sculpture evoked his childhood room in South Africa, where he found refuge in science fiction books, comics, computer games, and encyclopaedias. From those worlds of imagination, a spark emerged - one that turned the boy into a man who dreamed of leading humanity to other planets. As we moved around the piece, the image constantly shifted, showing how perspective changes everything: what seemed ordinary or broken revealed something entirely new. It was a powerful play on perspective, imagination, and inspiration.
Finally, Elad Elyakim's piece "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life" used an eight-metre-high lift shaft in the old Tara factory. The large-scale work featured white Hebrew typography on a black background, with letters intersecting and intertwining to fill the entire surface. It continued Elyakim's practice of giving discarded spaces and objects new life through painted words and letters.
"The Spark" is a moving and thought-provoking exhibition that I really enjoyed. The works show how inspiration can come even in a difficult and complex reality, and I connected with many of the pieces, which were both interesting and thought-provoking. It seems that sometimes, all it takes to keep going is one small spark.
The war continues to rumble on, and in our part of the country we hear sirens and the loud booms of missiles being intercepted overhead throughout the day and night. The result is broken sleep and a lingering tiredness that carries into the following day. In most cases, we first receive a preliminary alert on our phones, followed a few minutes later by a more urgent warning instructing us to get to a safe space, where we sit and listen to interceptions close by. In our home, we are fortunate to have a safe room - as do all houses and apartments built since 1992. These rooms are constructed from reinforced concrete and steel, with heavy doors and protected windows. However, many people across the country are not in the same situation. Some must hurry down multiple flights of stairs, while others even need to go outside to reach a shared bomb shelter. This is especially challenging for families with small children, and for the sick or elderly, who often cannot manage it at all. These moments, repeated throughout the day, create a new rhythm to daily life - one marked by pauses for alerts and a constant need to stay aware. And yet, in between the sirens, we are trying really, really hard to maintain our normal lives.
Just before the war began, a friend in the UK was excited to tell me that her daughter had got engaged to
her long-term partner. "Can I ask if you could make a card for them?" she
wrote. "So excited to be able to ask you!"
Her daughter and future son-in-law met each other through NOAM, the youth
movement that my own boys belonged to. NOAM is an acronym for
No'ar Masorti, Masorti Youth, a Zionist youth movement. The couple got to
know each other when they both lived and served in Israel and though they are
now in the UK, they plan to settle here again one day.
My friend sent me the couple's engagement photo and told me they share many
interests: they're both vegan, they love Israel, they met through
Noam Masorti, and they both love Tel Aviv.
I showed the young couple, with the bride-to-be proudly displaying her
engagement ring, against the backdrop of Tel Aviv. The Israeli flag is blowing
in the wind behind them. Next to the flag I included the NOAM logo, and below
it I added a little bowl with vegetables in it, as a nod to their shared vegan
lifestyle.
The card reached the UK quickly and seemed to be very well received!
The bride-to-be wrote:
"Hi Lisa, I just wanted to say the biggest thank you for making the card my
parents sent for our engagement. It’s SO beautiful and you are incredibly
talented! I already want to frame it!" Shortly after, my friend messaged:
"Hi Lisa! The card has arrived! They love it 🥰 Thank you so much again, and I can’t wait to see it myself!"
Mister Handmade in Israel asked me to make a card for a co-worker who was retiring. They had worked together for many years at the IT department of Clalit. Clalit is the largest of Israel's four state-mandated health service organizations, providing medical services to approximately 4.7 million people. (All Israeli citizens resident in the country must be a member of one of the four health service organizations.)
Mister Handmade in Israel's co-worker, Shai, is a Hapoel Tel Aviv superfan. Hapoel Tel Aviv is an Israeli football club based in Tel Aviv that competes in the 2nd division, the Liga Leumit. Bizarrely, Shai is also a keen Leeds United supporter, despite the fact that he has no connections to the UK or any family living there!
I have shown Shai wearing his red Hapoel Tel Aviv shirt. Behind him is a picture of Bloomfield Stadium, Hapoel Tel Aviv's home ground. I added the Leeds United badge in the top right of the card. The badge is based on the City of Leeds coat of arms and features the White Rose of York, which is a symbol of Yorkshire. In the left corner of the card I added a computer with the Clalit logo on the screen.
The Hebrew greeting on the card simply says "Toda Shai", "Thank you Shai".
Anu – Museum of the Jewish People is located in Tel Aviv, at the
centre of the Tel Aviv University campus in Ramat Aviv.
The Hebrew word Anu, or אנו, means 'we, us'. The museum, the largest Jewish museum in the world, was
formerly known as Beit Hatfutsot (Museum of the Jewish Diaspora) and was the brainchild of Dr. Nahum Goldmann,
founder and first president of the World Jewish Congress. Plans for a complete overhaul of Beit Hatfutsot began in 2007 and the museum underwent a
decade-long, $100 million expansion. It reopened to the public as Anu in March 2021. Mister Handmade in Israel and
I visited in April of this year.
Anu tells the ongoing story of the Jewish people, celebrating and
exploring the experiences, accomplishments and spirit of the Jewish
community from biblical times to the present day. The museum offers three floors of new exhibition galleries, a
children's gallery and a rotating schedule of temporary exhibitions.
The museum has some amazing displays, some of which are interactive. Our visit began on the third floor, which is named "A Mosaic - Modern Jewish Identity and Culture" and is devoted to exploring Jewish contributions to contemporary culture. Artifacts include a 1982 model of E.T. in the hall dedicated to Jewish contributions to Hollywood, the guitar Leonard Cohen played at his final concert in Israel in 2009, and a lace collar worn by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Digital interactive touch screens invite visitors to prepare the ingredients for Yemenite Jachnun and the Ethiopian flatbread Injera, among others recipes. The only thing missing was the smell of food cooking!
On the floor below, titled "The Journey - The Jewish Story Through Time", we learnt the story of the Jewish people from antiquity to the present day. This story recounts periods of growth, prosperity and flourishing cultural dialogue, but also times of pogroms and persecution. I found the poem above, in the section about the Holocaust, particularly moving.
The first floor, titled "Foundations - a Common Core, a Universal Message" presents the foundations of Judaism, including Jewish practice, beliefs and traditions, and the Bible and its influence on world culture. In May 2023 the Codex Sassoon 1053 was purchased on behalf of the American Friends of Anu for $38.1 million, making it one of the most expensive manuscripts ever sold. It is the oldest most complete Bible, containing all 24 books of the Tanakh, and is now displayed permanently on the "Foundations" floor of the museum. It is not every day that we get to see a book that is over 1,100 years old!
The world-renowned collection of Anu's synagogue models is displayed in the Synagogue Hall. The exhibition showcases 21 scale models of synagogues past and present from around the world, while a set of films invites visitors into different communities' Shabbat worship.
Another exhibition promotes Jewish humour. Mister Handmade in Israel spent, ahem, quite some time watching episodes of Seinfeld in the replica of Jerry's living room!
We ended our visit to the museum at the temporary exhibition "October Seventh". The exhibition curates works by 25 artists whose creative activity reflects the atrocious times Israeli society is facing since 7th October. Some of them are living artists, some deceased - either murdered on 7th October or fallen during the ongoing war. Others are residents (or former residents) of the southern areas, who suffered the loss of their loved ones, their homes, or whose families were affected by the horrors of the massacre.
In the days following the Hamas attacks of 7th October, Anu reacted immediately, inviting evacuees from the north and south into its Tel Aviv location, offering workshops and a space to just hang out. Then, when Orit Shaham-Gover, the museum's chief curator, was contacted by a relative of then-hostage Raz Ben Ami about her artwork (Ben Ami was released at the end of November while her husband, Ohad, remains a captive), she took a drive to get Ben Ami's works. Along with art by Inbar Heiman, known in the international graffiti artist community as Pink, who was murdered in Hamas captivity, and several others, she created an installation in the museum's lobby.
Anyone who walked through the doors of the museum saw those artists' works but Shaham-Gover felt it wasn't enough, and the exhibit, "October Seventh", was born. It will remain in place at Anu until at least 7th October this year.
The exhibition includes pieces by artists who experienced the 7th October attacks from both near and far, before and after 7th October. There is a work by Haim Maor about Kibbutz Be'eri resident and curator Sophie Berzon Mackie, as she sent out frantic messages about the terrorists in the kibbutz, which he later gathered into a kind of collage that focuses on her stress.
Leeor Shtainer mourns her two nieces killed at the Nova music festival, while directly across is the diary of Keren Shpilsher, who drew daily what she was watching on the screens and has filled six diaries so far. There are drawings by Jonathan Chazor, a young soldier killed in Gaza. Perhaps the most painful is a lifelike picture of a dog that he drew on a school blackboard while fighting in Gaza. On another wall is the red-stained works by Ziva Jelin, Be'eri resident and artist, whose works were torn up by shrapnel during the Hamas onslaught.
There is also the vivid, striking video work of photographer Roee Idan, below, killed in one of the horrifying terrorist attacks of that morning near his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. His images were among some of the first that captured the attacks on that morning, as he photographed Hamas attackers flying through the air on motorized paragliders before being killed.
A playlist of songs to accompany the exhibit could be heard in the background, with works by Matti Caspi, Eviatar Banai, Idan Amedi, Shlomo Artzi and many others. Their tunes offer a different meaning and form of consolation after the attacks of 7th October.
Finally, a reel of photos played silently, showing soldiers fighting in the kibbutzim, the many funerals and burials, the rallies for the hostages and the faces of their family members. "October Seventh" is a snapshot of how artists are responding to 7th October. It was a meaningful way to end our visit to Anu – Museum of the Jewish People.
I am a graphic designer by profession who has gone 'back to basics' and I love anything handmade. I enjoy working with paper and other materials, and am always excited to try new projects.
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