One of our favourite things about our World Illustration Awards Site Specific Category is showcasing illustrators ability to to transform public spaces. Orit Bergman and Anat Warshavsky did just that, leading them to win the WIA2023 Site Specific Category. What’s more, they were also selected as the Overall Professional Winners for the competition.

Their exhibition project ‘What is More, Yellow or an Elephant?’ was commissioned by culture and design centre, Hanssen House, and with the recent AOI Inside Illustration season focusing on site specific work, this is the perfect time to find out more.

The playful 3D installation captivated both children and adults. With a burst of characters cascading up the walls, brightening up the main gallery halls throughout the summer months.

“Illustration doesn’t have to be limited to paper. As it expands to new fields and spaces, it gains new audience.”

We chatted with Orit and Anat about their process creating work for public spaces and working as a creative duo.

‘What is More, Yellow or an Elephant?’ by Orit Bergman and Anat Warshavsky Overall Winners Site Specific Project WIA2023

Your project title is a puzzle, were you keen for the title to stimulate ‘an answer’ to the question in the reader’s mind?

Yes. We wanted the reader to be intrigued by the name of the exhibition and invite them to look for an answer while visiting it. Of course, there is no right answer to the question, this is why it remains in the visitors’ mind throughout the visit to the exhibition. In addition, the nonsense element in the name reflects the playful creation experience of our creative process, an experience we wanted to share with the viewer.

Did you visit the exhibition space before you started thinking about what you would create for the show? Did the space influence any elements of your artworks?

We visited the space multiple times, took pictures and even used a 3D model of the space in order to understand how our images will fit into the space.

The idea of the yellow monster passing through the three exhibition rooms was developed in order to take advantage of the strange architectural structure of Beit Hansen, which consists of 3 gallery spaces leading to each other through a wide corridor. We wanted to lead the audience inside the exhibition in different rhythms: A fast one that starts at the entrance, moves along the yellow monster, and ends at the big back wall that was painted yellow and full of creatures. The yellow monster emerges from this wall and hangs along the entire central part of the gallery space. The monster is joined by a flock of small and large creatures hanging around it joined in a happy rampage. The second, slower rhythm moves along the walls of the exhibition and allows the visitors to observe the paintings and smaller works hang on the wall. The creatures inhabiting the exhibition look different from every angle. The fast movement makes this clear. In contrast, the slow movement allows focus and lingering.

‘What is More, Yellow or an Elephant?’ by Orit Bergman and Anat Warshavsky Project Development

What does it mean to you to create artwork in three dimensions?

Both of us like to play while illustrating, working with different materials in 3D allows another level of freedom of playfulness. We started by dealing with the thinking about the 3-dimensional architectural space of the galleries, and the way in which the audience will move through it. Then we looked at the 3D aspects of each separate object in the exhibition, how each element would look from different angles and from different perspectives, those of children or adults. In this work both of us were interested in exploring different opportunities that appear when turning a 2D illustration into a 3D object.  We restricted ourselves to using flat surfaces, creating 3D by adding angles rather than by volume and material thickness. We looked for reduction and abstraction of the images, in shape and in color, keeping the images clear and recognizable. Such work creates objects that look very different from different points of view.

‘What is More, Yellow or an Elephant?’ by Orit Bergman and Anat Warshavsky Overall Winners Site Specific Project WIA2023

How did you want visitors to engage with the work and the space that it was in?

We wanted the visitors, children and adults, to invent their own stories as a response to our work. The idea was to create a feeling of entering a disassembled painting, reading it while moving through the space of the gallery. We wanted the exhibition to be interactive, without all kinds of buttons and touch screens, and without touching the exhibits. The interactivity is created in the visitors` brains and in the physical movement of their bodies.

In an extra room, with tables and seating cushions for the whole family, the visitors could read and look at the books we illustrated and wrote.

Would you encourage illustrators to consider creating work for specific sites?

Illustration doesn’t have to be limited to paper. As it expands to new fields and spaces, it gains new audience.

There very few galleries that show illustration and especially illustration for children. Beit Hansen has been doing this faithfully for several years in a row. People have a need for exhibitions of this type, as was evident by the crowds that visited our exhibition.

‘What is More, Yellow or an Elephant?’ by Orit Bergman and Anat Warshavsky Overall Winners Site Specific Project WIA2023

You entered WIA2023 as a collective.  Can you tell us more about your experience of working together on this project?

This was the first time we worked together, and we discovered a common language on the fly. We started getting to know each other through illustration games such as continuous drawing on a long roll of paper from Ikea. We realized in the process that we wanted to create something new and complete together, as opposed to dividing the space into separate territories for each one of us. This required modesty and generosity on both sides, but it also allowed us to learn from each other, and create this strange yellow world.

We worked separately for a significant part of the time, each in her studio, and met for a joint and productive session every couple of weeks.

If you’re interested in exploring the world of Site Specific illustration, make sure to check out the current Inside Illustration season which includes an exclusive Podcast, a Creative Course for members, in-depth Article, Resource, Commissioner interview and a comprehensive ‘How To...’ guide publication.