An Unheard Voice: The Paintings of Zohar Tal Inbar, a Mother Looking at Her Soldier Son

Abstract

This study focuses on a series—Of Beautiful Arms—by Israeli artist Zohar Tal Inbar. The paintings were created a few years after the artist’s son was released from the army, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It includes figurative paintings, most of them focusing on the body of a young man—a soldier. The methodology combines visual analysis of the paintings with interviews with the artist. Findings have shown that the series embodies double estrangement—thematic and stylistic. The artist has used intertextuality to portray soldier images borrowed from Greek and Roman mythology and from Christianity. In terms of style, the paintings portray realistic figures against abstract backgrounds that distance them from Israeli reality while leaving them recognizable as Israeli soldiers. Using double estrangement allowed the artist to express a feminist counterposition—that of a woman refusing to passively accept the role of an uncritically supportive soldier’s mother. In addition, she has explored the soldier’s fragility by pointing to PTSD, a common phenomenon among military personnel, which in Israeli discourse still suffers a disfranchised status.