Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 22, 2022: Alon Kedem, an Israeli emerging artist (#1552)

Alon Kedem (1982) was born to a mother who was born in Bagdad and to a father born and raised in Tel Aviv. Kedem lives and works in Jerusalem. The "Hamudi" in the title of the exhibition is perhaps a first name, a last name, or a nickname charged with associations to power play, attraction and rejection, fear and humiliation. Another possible association is the "cuteness" characteristic of the Kawaii culture prevalent in animation films and Japanese toys as well as in contemporary pop art celebrating naïveté and innocence. Their characteristics are a remarkably large head in comparison to the body, eyes open wide, a high forehead and a tiny mouth and nose.

Kedem's " Hamudi " can be interpreted as a self portrait of the artist telling his life story, our story through the aesthetic-political painting connected to country, land and place. Present and at the same time distant.

Kedem leaves his identity unraveled and deceiving, a cross between Israeli-Middle Eastern-Arab-Muslim, affords to the viewer to mend it from the matter of Israeli daily reality. The saying "Jewish- Arab" is on the rise over the last years, especially among the young whose parents immigrated from Arab nations: It protests the belittling and blurring of their cultural roots in Israeli society and calls out to abolish the sense of shame in their heritage.

His gigantic nose reminds one of the stereotypical Jew in anti-Semitic caricatures. Yet Kedem's painting is not a caricature. He deals with contemporary questions in painting pertaining to the politics of identity, narrative and forms of representation. In the mug shot paintings which recall police facial composites, as well as in the scenery paintings – which are "background" for the journey paintings- the flat background functions as music in an action film, exacerbating the sense of suspense and horror, announcing the shrouded

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