The Politics of Place: An Evening with Israeli Graphic Designer & Activist David Tartakover

Co-presented by Artis & AIGA/NY

Please join us for a special lecture and discussion with David Tartakover, esteemed Israeli graphic designer, political activist, artist and design educator. Tartakover will discuss his role as a “local designer,” unraveling the importance of locality and politics in his practice by presenting key projects from his prolific career. 

“I am a local designer. My relationship with the place where I live is an inseparable part of my work. This relationship is cultural, social and political. In the 1980’s, I began to initiate, design and produce personal posters dealing with my society and its politics, relating mainly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its effect on Israeli society. These posters are instantaneous reactions to occurrences and developments, and are quick and cheap to make. They are characterized by the use of newspaper photographs, Xerox copying and direct juxtaposition of text and image. This area of my work, in which I initiate and produce my own messages, not for commercial purposes but from a personal need, is the most important part of my entire practice. In the 1920s, Avigdor Hameiri wrote, “Freedom of opinion is not a right but a duty.” Living in a place fraught with conflicts between Arab and Jew; religious and secular; right and left, I attempt to fulfill this duty by making straightforward images, though they may often be painful to me, and cause pain to others.” –David Tartakover

David Tartakover (b. 1944, Israel) is a graphic designer, political activist, artist and design educator. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, where he has worked as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication for the past 36 years. Since 1975, Tartakover has operated his own design studio in Tel Aviv, specializing in cultural and political projects. His work has won numerous prizes in Israel and abroad, including a gold medal at the 8th Lathi Poster Biennial, Finland (1989) and Grand Prix at the Moscow International Poster Biennial (2004). He is a 2002 Israel Prize laureate, celebrated for his contributions to Israeli design and culture. Tartakover’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions internationally and included in the permanent collections of museums in China, Europe, Japan and the United States. As a collector and researcher of the history of Israeli design, Tartakover also curates design exhibitions at museums in Israel and abroad. His publications include Where We Were and What We Did (Keter Publishing, 1996), an Israeli lexicon of the 1950s and 60s, and Tartakover, a monograph of his work from the past 40 years (Am Oved Publishing, 2011). He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and was president of the Graphic Designers Association of Israel (GDAI).

David Tartakover portrait by Elyasaf Kowner

THIS EVENT IS PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH: