Ukraine-born Jewish artist’s lockdown work marks shift

Celebrated Ukraine-born Jewish artist Zoya Cherkassky has exhibited her newest work online through a New York artists’ hub, with critics saying it marks a significant shift with her art from the past three decades.

Cherkassy, who now lives in Tel Aviv, produced the images during lockdown. Her latest offerings were inspired by a YouTube video of an Orthodox Jewish wedding in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak.

She became known for depicting the huge wave of Soviet Jewish immigration to Israel over the past three decades, but critics say her latest work appears to show Jewish life in the shtetl, using ink, water colour and wax crayons.

There is a centuries-old Jewish custom in some quarters to conduct weddings at the edge of cemeteries during times of plague and epidemic, as a superstitious means of keeping illness at bay.

Among Cherkassky’s recent additions is Black Chuppah, a drawing of a newly-married couple, and since she began creating the images in the run-up to Pesach, images of the festival have crept in.