Khen Shish

Khen Shish is an Israeli painter and installation artist whose work often returns to the image of the eye.

born 1970The eye motif in paintingThe Khen | Djamila projectLarge wall paintings and installations

Occupation: painter, artist
Education: Oranim Academic College, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design

Khen Shish was born in 1970 in Safed

Khen Shish was born in Safed in 1970. Her parents were Jews from Tunisia.

She studied art at Oranim Academic College and earned a BFA in 1995. She then lived for several years in Paris, London, Rome and Berlin. In 1998 she came back to Israel and completed an MFA at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the Hebrew University in 1999. She also studied at the New Seminar for Visual Culture at Camera Obscura in Tel Aviv.

Shish works in painting, drawing, collage, works on television screens, large wall paintings and installations. Her influences include popular culture, Egyptian cinema, horror films and writers such as Julia Kristeva, Joseph Conrad and Jorge Luis Borges. The eye appears again and again in her works, and it was the theme of a survey show at the Negev Museum of Art.

From 1999 to 2002 she worked on the Khen | Djamila project. In London she presented herself as Djamila from Tunis and gathered meetings with Arab immigrants, then turned the material into an installation. It was shown at the Museum of Art, Ein Harod, and in London. She lives in Tel Aviv with her daughter.