Contact: hanitailan@gmail.com
Hanita Ilan was born in 1978 in New York and lives and works in Jerusalem. Her painterly practice centers on large-scale painting installations that engage with historical and cultural beliefs, myths, and archetypes. Ilan earned her BFA (2010) and MFA (2014) from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and also holds a BA in Archaeology from Bar-Ilan University (2003).
Ilan’s painting installations often consist of paintings supported by sculptural structures. She conceives of her paintings as scrolls, painted on both sides, so that their unfolding across the structures reveals only fragments of the image. The elongated format – whether fully spread or partially rolled onto the support – enables movement between revelation and concealment, allowing the painting to emerge as an open field of multiple meanings. Many of her works are site-specific, as they are the results of research into the exhibition space or context. At times, the imagery is based on historical photographs. Through erasure, smearing, pouring, and wiping, Ilan produces surfaces of varied textures in which images emerge and dissolve back into blurred, near-abstract scenes, composing a fragmented pictorial narrative. In the rapid painting process, blind spots appear – resembling bursts of light that scorch the image, while illuminating the volatile wholeness of local and universal myths.
Ilan has presented numerous solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and internationally, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the JCC, New York, and the Wilfrid Israel Museum of Asian Art and Studies. She is a graduate of the Artists’ Program at the Institute for Advanced Studies curated by Dr. Noam Gal, and completed extended artist residencies at Art Cube Artists Studios, Jerusalem. Ilan is the recipient of multiple awards and grants, among them the Plumas Art Foundation Grant, Prize to Encourage Creativity and the independent Artists Grant from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport, and the Rabinovich Foundation Grant.