This powerful print portfolio by artist Zoya Cherkassky, on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents twelve inkjet prints based on her original mixed-media drawings. Created in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023—now known in Israel as “Black Shabbat”—the series confronts the violence and trauma of that day, during which approximately 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
A Kyiv-born artist who immigrated to Israel in 1991, Cherkassky turned to art as a means of processing the horror and confusion that followed the attack, much as she had done during the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022. Her deeply personal yet universally resonant works blend direct depictions of the atrocities with visual references to iconic Western art, drawing from the expressive traditions of Pablo Picasso, Käthe Kollwitz, and other chroniclers of wartime suffering.
The resulting portfolio is a haunting meditation on violence, memory, and the enduring need to create meaning through art in times of upheaval.
Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, 7 Oct. 2023, 2023, inkjet print on Torchon paper, edition 19/100, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston purchase funded by Nina and Michael Zilkha
