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Eliahou Eric Bokobza, who was born in France to a family from Tunisia, mixes diverse visual sources
in his paintings: private family photographs, oriental and local symbols and images, Mediterranean paintings. from all these he concosts a series of very colorful paintings. On a background of repetitive patterns that contain an abundance of local, Orientalistic and other images ( eyes,fishes, sabra cactus plants, tombs of sheiks, airplanes, pioneers, Mickey Mouse figures, a portrait of Herzl), figures appear that are representations of local types ( a boy, a girl, a father, a mother,a soldier,an "Eastern" rabbi,etc)
in "photographic"poses,some of them cliche-like,and some ridiculous.
The paintings, which look a little naive and decorative, are not so innocent. Behind the strong coloring
and the amusing narrativity, there hides a critical statement about Zionism, family conventions, militarism, religiousness, and nationalism - in brief, about all the things that were meant to produce a " new Jewish man" out of the Israeli melting pot. Bokobza, in his paintings, reflects the strange outcome of this melting pot - a kind of jumble, or conglomerate, of everything mixed with everything. There is something heart-warming ( and,for those who dreamed, perhaps heart-breaking too) in their coloring and their inner wealth, which is an embodiment of the "post-Modern", and perhaps the "post-Zionist".

Miri Taragan, Ada Naamani.
Janco-Dada Museum, Ein Hod, January 2001

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