Lights all askew in the heavens Outline Festival – illustration and words in Jerusalem

The exhibition took shape during the war that began in October 2023, a period in which reality splintered into flickering shadows of uncertainty and deferred hope. Wald presents a personal visual diary of a consciousness trying to form its own structure inside a reality pushed into prolonged disorder. It is a consciousness looking inward not only out of conceptual inquiry, but out of an existential need to understand, to hold, perhaps even to survive, within chaos whose colors shift from day to day.

Wald’s works are woven from a practice of drawing and movement: a blot, a line, a small gesture from which a figure, a situation, or an encounter between different manifestations of the same self begins to form. These are not drawings meant to document, but mechanisms of searching: locating a feeling, a thought, or an inner shift through short animative gestures.

The animative loop in which she works is a movement shaped by conditions of disruption and suspension, forming a choreography of resistance. Repetition makes it possible to illuminate marginal moments, everyday gestures, and movements that seem uncharged, yet become charged simply through their recurrence.

Wald’s focus on circular motion grew out of her study of movement practices, from the human to the physical, where even what appears “straight” is built from combinations of rotations. This premise becomes a methodological foundation for her: a shift from a linear view of reality to a bent, geodesic view, in which a path is defined not by a straight line but by its deviations. Changing the point of view opens up a new way to think about the relationships between body, time, and space.

From the goldfish that was injured and managed to heal itself, to the visual diary that recorded the war days, to romantic relationships and public protests, the rotational movement emerges in each situation as a complex model. It is a dual motion of preservation and interruption, operating simultaneously in the personal and collective spheres.

The exhibition title quotes a headline from the New York Times, published in November 1919, following the astronomical observation that confirmed Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity for the first time. The observation, which studied the path of light rays during a solar eclipse, pointed to a phenomenon revolutionary for its time: the bending of light from its straight trajectory due to the influence of mass, evidence that space and time are not fixed but can be warped.

Just as a ray of light alters its path when it encounters mass, so too can a consciousness, a habit, or a representational system shift, bend, or repeat itself when encountering another kind of weight. Trauma, disrupted routine, social reality, and personal history act here as forces that alter a trajectory no less than gravitational pull.

The exhibition is presented as part of the ninth edition of Outline: Illustration and Words in Jerusalem.

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Osi Wald is an animation artist and lecturer.
Specializes in experimental animation works, alternative animation processes, site specific animation, and projects that combine dance and animation on stage and screen. Works in collaboration with animators and choreographers.
Among her award-winning works: an animated installation screened on the beach, an animated research of the Israel Museum’s catalogue archive, a dance piece in which she runs a magical animation box, a stage work for musicians dancers and a screen, an animated film that tells the story of an actor experiencing an anxiety attack, and more.
Artistic director of Beit Avi Chai’s “A Face. A Day. A Memory”. Serves as a mentor, artistic consultant and lector in animation funds and hubs – Copro, The Jerusalem film & television Fund and more.

Osi was part of the animation team of “Waltz with Bashir” and “The Congress” directed by Ari Pullman, worked as an animator in Nir and Gali’s “Nine Souls”, in children’s series, and in many other projects.
Graduate of the Department of Animation at Bezalel with honours. B.Sc. in Physics and Math from the Hebrew University Jerusalem, as part of “Amirim” Special honours program in Natural science.

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  Photographer: Daniel Hanoch

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  Photographer: Daniel Hanoch

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  Photographer: Daniel Hanoch

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  Photographer: Daniel Hanoch

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  Photographer: Daniel Hanoch