Shy Abady, who has extensively explored Prussian-German history in relation to the Jewish encounter within it and operates within the tradition of classical Western painting, returns here to his family roots to rediscover the complexity and challenges of Arab-Jewish identity, which Israeli society has not been able to contain. The series, which includes images of holy sites and graves common to Jews and Arabs, does not indulge in nostalgia for the past but rather mourns the historical loss of a living, thriving, and enabling cultural continuum that moved between Jerusalem, Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus — today’s strongholds of bloody conflict. Shy Abady was born and raised in Jerusalem (1965) and currently creates in Tel Aviv. He is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the Department of History of Art at Tel Aviv University.

Over the years, Abady has created series of a biographical nature that follow figures such as the legendary dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, and the poets Radu Luper and Paul Celan. He has also created series of a historical-political nature such as “My Other Germany,” “Augusta Victoria,” “Boomerang in My Airways,” and now “Back to the Levant.” In other series, such as “Icon-Golden Age” and “Marquese, Pontormo, and I,” Abady examined the language of art itself and the aesthetic legacy of Western-Christian art in relation to Jewish-Israeli art. His works, which often combine drawing and mixed techniques on plywood, sometimes using electric burning, have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums both in Israel and abroad.