Befriend Your Demon

Tel-Aviv Street Art

The cracked and crumbling walls, weather-beaten doors and windswept alleyways in Tel Aviv’s varied neighborhoods have become the main canvas for an eclectic group of mostly immigrant artists. Working individually and in crews with stencils, spray paint, markers and paste-ups, they have transformed the landscape of their adopted city.
In “Befriend Your Demon” photographer Leora Cheshin captures these images with a mastery of composition and balance. She creates an ambiance that exudes a sense of impending catastrophe with undercurrents of death, dislocation and decay. Lurking monsters and contorted cryptic figures portend a frightening, uncertain future. Just about everything is askew and appears to be off-balance. Anxiety is ever-present as the strong prey upon the weak. The boundaries between man and animal are increasingly blurred. There is fear of imminent war, looming violence and religious coercion as internal and external inequalities and tensions increase.
And yet for all the despair, there is beauty, life and wit in this world of contradictions. Hope mixes with sore doubt. Cheshin’s poignantly haunting photographs in “Befriend Your Demon” rescue these ephemeral images from oblivion. With passion, irony and a sensitive eye, Cheshin skillfully records the cacophonous echoes of found art on these crumbling walls as she transmutes them into artworks charged with visual and psychological intrigue.