Israeli artist inspired by waves, flag colors for Athens mural

Israeli artist Adi Ioshpe took inspiration the notion of constant movement and from the colors of Israel and Greece’s flags for a mural she created on the facade of an old building in downtown Athens.

“Waves,” at 24 Lekka Street, is part of the Israel-Greece, Common Values initiative and was selected among dozens of proposals by a joint committee of the Municipality of Athens, the Embassy of Israel and the owners of the building.

It was unveiled on Sunday by Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis and Israeli Ambassador to Greece Yossi Amrani, who said that the mural acts as a “reminder of the long-standing friendship between the countries and peoples.”

“Culture is the ideal means of communication. It breaks down walls, overcomes obstacles and is the best answer to fanaticism, intolerance and hatred,” added Bakoyannis.

Ioshpe was born in 1998 and is a student at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts in Jerusalem. 

“When I started getting my idea for the work the first thing that came up to my mind was the colors, resembling the flags of Israel and Greece – blue and white. I wanted to give the feeling of movement, constant motion – like the sea waves hitting the shoreline, the clouds in the sky, also giving place to the emptiness and the in-between spaces, whose borders are defined by what’s present,” she said, according to a press release issued by the Israeli Embassy in Athens on Monday. 

“The waves are also the waves of history, the waves of the pandemic. The shades of blue and white are the colors of the sea and the colors of the flags of Greece and Israel,” she added.