The Wall is pictured as a symbol representing the end of all wars and the prevention of any sacrifice of innocent lives.

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Gelo is a New York-based artist and architect with over 20 years of experience in art and architecture. Throughout different periods of his life, Gelo has captured human stories in the form of buildings and illustrations. His work reinterprets architectural forms as art across various times and spaces, blending architectural design with the dramas of everyday life. In addition to architectural forms, light and shadow are essential elements in his art. Gelo’s use of light and shadow captures the depth of space, rendering each moment in unique tones and colors.

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Prior to 10_7, the iron wall aka the Erez crossing aka the Gaza-Israel border, had always held a horrifying fascination for me. the phrase hidden in plain sight seemed to appropriately describe its nature (as well as the state of Israel itself). The only crossing point for goods & people and through a militarized checkpoint. A massive multi barrier wall with sensors, remote-control machine guns and barbed wire, patrolled by air and ground by the IOF. Palestinians were not to pass through this checkpoint pf heavily fortified separation barriers and security systems—without strict, specialized permits or authorization.

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“The Gaza-Israel border straddles one of the starkest economic contrasts in the world (the Korean Demilitarized Zone is the other): on the Israeli side GDP per capita is $55,000 and population density is low, while on the Palestinian side, the GDP per capita is $1,250 and population density is among the highest in the world.”

It was difficult to comprehend how one could acknowledge it’s monstrous existence while simultaneously denying the reality of Israeli apartheid & the what many had rightfully come to refer to all Palestinian territory that the regime occupied as an open air prison.

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It is only difficult to understand however if you believe that there was ever any genuine desire for something other than what we have all seen play out. Because once you look beyond the physical structure itself & it’s cynical rationalizations you quickly find that the iron wall was a philosophy of violence, fascist supremacy and most significantly a philosophy of dishonesty. At its core the iron wall is not just a structure of subjugation & subordination but perfectly encapsulates Zionsim as an ideology. The philosophy of the iron wall is to perpetuate some false notion of self defense while committing relentless & unmatched oppressive violence against those you claim to need protection from. To forever hold a victim card in one hand while donning a machine gun with a smirk and a wink in the other.  Iron Dome. Iron Wall. Iron Air. Under the false premise of “war” and “self defense” Israel & Zionism continue their near century of bloody dominion & transparently vicious desires of annihilation & expansion. There is no way to see it any other way.

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For myself, making art involves spending copious spans of time searching for, consuming and studying images as well as in depth reading ofbtkh  historical & contemporary subject matter. I see this as an immense privilege and with it a responsibility to attempt to understand the world I live in and the matters that make it what it is. Iron Air was a small but honest attempt at making an artwork about the occupation & genocide of the Palestinian people & the long running colonial psyop that is Zionism. In light of the dire circumstances facing modern civilization it is often challenging to see significant urgency for art making. I suppose I continue to try and find support for a counter argument to that, for no other reason but to give myself & others permission to look deeper into the truth of the past, to fully understand the reality of the present & most importantly to imagine a hopeful divergent future.

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ADHD is the moniker of US based artist and musician Colin Frangicetto. His gritty, hyper-layered works channel a language of cohesive chaos to explore memetics, parapolitical alienation, and post-internet decadence.

Media:
Photos from my family archive, my personal archive, digital painting, a physical collage on a reproduction of a Ze’ev Raban tourism in Palestine Zionist poster, photographs of graffiti, and quotes taken from a handout from the Taub Center for Israel Studies at NYU in 2018.

Description:
The poster is an important image in my life. I had this copy in my home growing up and there’s at least one original copy circulating in my extended family. It always confused me because it mentioned Palestine but Palestine or Palestinians were never really spoken about as I grew up. Not in Jewish school and not at home. A history never told.

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The poster was created by Ze’ev Raban for the Association of Jewish Guides of Palestine in Jerusalem. I was born in Jerusalem and some of my ancestors like Raban are from Poland. This image and other Zionist imagery were common for me to see or be around as a child. The first hand experiences seeing racism and the apartheid system in place during my stay in occupied Palestine/Israel in 2018-2019 left me grasping for answers. I have vivid memory of reading about the discrepancies of Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews in a Taub Center study which put the facts in front of my face for the first time. My relationship with Israel has changed drastically leading to my involvement in anti-Zionist organizations and writing on social media.

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Collaging the imagery that represent times where my ideologies and understandings were different confronts these images and how they hold meaning in my life. The base poster was the catalyst for the wider conversation. By pulling from photographs like ones of me as a teenager playing on decommissioned IDF tanks, childhood photos in Jerusalem, and at pro Palestinian protests, I am using the imagery of my life to deconstruct and reconstruct the narratives I was told and believed.

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Asher Hoffman (b.2000, Jerusalem) is an American multimedia artist. Asher is self-taught and works primarily in oil, oil pastels, collage, and digital painting. He creates work that connects audiences to the human experience in an ever-isolating, digitally driven world. Through stain-soak techniques, expressionistic brushstrokes, and a focus on light and form, Asher's works are inspired by the abstract expressionist movement, Matisse, and Monet. His work belongs to the lineage of the great American ab-ex painters, and he feels a kindred connection to Helen Frankenthaler, Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, and Mark Rothko. His religious Jewish upbringing adds a layer of imbued spiritualism that he has also explored through Buddhist and Yogic studies.