Israeli artist Shy Abady explores the failure of modern Judaism

HAARETZ
By Shaul Setter

Shy Abady's 'The Pretty Jewess (After Synagoga)' Avi Amsalem

TEL AVIV---An exhibition of portraits that features lesser known or errant offspring in Jewish history positions the ‘Arab Jew’ as the necessary extreme of the dynasty. The exhibition of portraits by Shy Abady (Jerusalem-born, 1965) enters the Schechter Gallery and transforms it, precisely because it is not “unorthodox” or progressive in the usual sense. On the contrary, this exhibition, “The Restless,” is fraught with a pungent sense of looking back, reexamination, turbulence and complication. On the face of it, the show follows the regular contour lines of Conservative Judaism. It consists of 10 portraits of Jewish women and men from different eras of Jewish history: from Abinadav, the son of King Saul, to Felix Mendelssohn, Hans Herzl (Theodor’s son) and Hannah Arendt, down to the artist’s mother and grandfather. [More]