Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1949 Beihan, Yemen

Year of Migration to the UK: 1974

Biography

Artist Zadok Ben-David was born in Beihan, Aden Protectorate (now Yemen) in 1949, the year his family immigrated to Israel. He studied the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem from 1971-73 but after graduation, in 1974, he immigrated to England, attending the University of Reading and then London's Saint Martin’s School of Art, where he studied under Anthony Caro, William Tucker and Phillip King. With this geographical shift, he was also faced with a new visual language, as British abstraction and conceptual art of the 1970s were very different from contemporary Israeli art at the time.

Ben-David's oeuvre includes sculpture, installation, and public artworks, often made of metal, where the material generates optical illusions. He also uses UV lights, holograms, and video. His practice explores the interconnected themes of civilisation, environment, evolution, nature, Western science, technology, and the human condition, contemplating its absurdity alongside a sense of hope. He came of age during the rise of the New British Sculpture movement in the 1980s, which marked a departure from the minimalism and conceptualism that dominated the 1960s and 1970s. His work often references his Yemeni heritage and its oral traditions, symbolism, illusions, and cave paintings, as well as antique engravings and botanical illustrations. In the 1980s, he drew heavily on metaphorical sources found in classical fables, where anthropomorphic animals served as proxies for human behaviour. Transitioning into the 1990s, his focus shifted towards Magical Realism, incorporating concealed elements, defying gravity, and crafting illusions. In the 2000s, Ben-David became increasingly fascinated with the tangible aspects of nature, exemplified by his imagery in which human forms are interwoven with arboreal structures, and conversely, where trees and vegetation take on anthropomorphic qualities. Frequently employing machine or laser-cut metal, he creates large-scale figurative sculptures, although his work sometimes explores miniature scales. Repetition often features prominently in his formal language, with multiplied silhouettes and butterfly motifs regularly appearing. His communicative process extends beyond the purely visual, embracing an infinite array of subconscious elements that shape our identity and challenge our perceptions and emotions. This results in a poetic and delicate sense of magic in his works, rooted in his passion for magic tricks.

Ben-David has exhibited widely. In 1986 he participated in From Two Worlds, at London's Whitechapel Gallery, which presented the work of non-European artists living and working in Britain; in 1988 he represented Israel in the Venice Biennale. He has also presented work outdoors, including at the Cass Sculpture Foundation at Goodwood, West Sussex and the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail. Hales Gallery, Deptford mounted his exhibition, Black Fields in 2007. Dominating one side of the gallery, the installation comprised 3,000 acid-etched stainless-steel miniatures inspired by 18th and 19th-century botanical illustrations, juxtaposing individual black-painted plants against a pristine white backdrop. Employing his interest in science and visual tricks, it offered viewers limited vantage points while evoking, despite its simplicity, a haunting landscape marked by wars and plagues. Supported by Sotheby’s in 2008, Ben-David created a public sculpture, Four Seasons for Hanover Square in Mayfair. This ‘seasonal’ piece—composed of interconnected human figures—underwent a dynamic transformation as the metal oxidised, altering its colour in response to environmental conditions. In 2022, he held a solo exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens. Natural Reserve engaged with ecological themes, exploring the precarious conditions of nature and human engagement with it, contemplating both its tragic aspects and hopeful prospects. The centrepiece was the installation Blackfield, a 360-degree piece consisting of 17,000 etched and hand-painted flowers. His 2024 Los Angeles exhibition, From Here, There, and Everywhere, featured over 70 meticulously crafted aluminium sculptures from the series People I Saw but Never Met, begun in 2015, which explored the paradox of simultaneous closeness and isolation, representing real individuals whom Ben-David photographed during his travels, later translating this imagery into aluminium figures. The exhibition captured the breadth of human existence, featuring nameless strangers from Europe, USA, South America, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica, ambitiously documenting the universal human condition and celebrating the diversity of global demographics. Ben-David thus highlighted our shared humanity, inviting viewers to empathise with unknown individuals. Separately, his boxes series, in which different themes or visuals from exhibitions are contained within transparent boxes, has none of the busy aesthetics of Joseph Cornell but, nevertheless, nods to the desire for boxed archiving.

In addition to his practice, Ben-David taught sculpture at Saint Martin’s between 1977-82 and at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design from 1982- 85. Zadok Ben-David lives and works in London, England and Portugal. Previously, he divided his time between London and Tel Aviv, Israel. In the UK public domain his work is held in several collections, including Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum; Bradford Museums and Art Galleries; Arts Council Collection, and Pallant House Gallery. In 1993 his large-scale wall-piece, Restless Dream was commissioned for the Limehouse Link Tunnel by the London Docklands Development Corporation.

Related books

Zadok Ben-David, Natural Reserve (Surrey: Kew Publishing, 2021)
Ian Borden, The Limehouse Link: the architectural and cultural history of a monumental road tunnel in London's Docklands, The Journal of Architecture, v.16 n.5 (October 2011), pp. 589-613
Felicity Fenner et al, Zadok Ben-David: Human Nature (London: Circa Press, 2007)
Victor De Circasia, Zadok Ben David: Magica Realtà, exh. cat. (Cavagnolo: Place Arte Contemporanea, 2001)
Binghui Huangfu, B, ed., Evolution and Theory: Zadok Ben-David, exh. cat. (Singapore: Lasalle-SIA College of the Art, 1999)
Frances Spalding, 20th Century Painters and Sculptors (Suffolk: Antique Collectors Club Ltd, 1991), pp. 74-75
Laura Hamilton, Zadok Ben-David, exh. cat. (Glasgow: Collins Gallery, 1991)
Waldemar Januszczak, Zadok Ben-David: Sculpture 1987-90, exh. cat. (Glasgow: Collins Gallery, 1990)
Rachel Kirby, ed., From Two Worlds, exh. cat. (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1986)

Public collections

Related organisations

Saint Martin's School of Art (student and teacher )
Ravensbourne College of Art (teacher )
University of Reading (student )

Selected exhibitions

Zadok Ben-David: From Here, There, and Everywhere (solo exhibition), Shoshana Wayne Gallery, London (2024)
People I Saw but Never Met (solo exhibition), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2021)
Zadok Ben-David: Natural Reserve (solo exhibition), Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art/Kew Gardens, London (2021-22)
Zadok Ben-David at Singapore Botanic Gardens (solo exhibition presented by Sotheby’s), Botanic Gardens, Singapore (2012)
Four Seasons (solo public installation), Hanover Square, London (2008)
Black Fields (solo exhibition), Hales Gallery, London (2007)
Invisible Reality (solo exhibition), Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou (2007)
Sequences & Repetition (group show), Jerwood Space, London (2007)
Innerscapes (solo exhibition), Cass Foundation Gallery, London (2004)
Jewish Art of the 20th Century (group show), Barbican, London (1990)
From Two Worlds, Whitechapel Gallery, London (1986)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Zadok Ben-David]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Zadok Ben-David artist