2010
The book “Facebook” was published on the occasion of the exhibition “Sofia” (named after the birthplace of Eshl Gershuni), held in 2010 at Inga Gallery and curated by her son, the photographer Uri Gershuni.
The character of the book recalls a sketchbook. It includes expressive oil-painted portraits of the artist and her close circle, created בעקבות a prior series of masks and sculpted heads. The portraits feature motifs identified with her work, including a cross, a question mark, a veil, a mask, and mouths opened in a silent scream.
The paintings were scanned on both sides of the paper, preserving the physical materiality of the painting and the traces of oil paint on the reverse side of the page, creating a tactile experience of the medium. In the second part of the book, the pages are left blank—hinting that more is to come, a continuation of the work.
- Copies: 500
- Pages: 100
- Type of binding: Hardcover
- Dimensions (cm): 280x210
- Reproductions: Scans-Shuki Kook Studio
- Printing: A.R Printing, Ltd
- Binding: A.R Printing, Ltd
- Type of printing: Offset Printing
- Publication: Self Publishing
- Place of publication: Tel Aviv-Jaffa
- Book photography: Leafing Magazine
Bianca Eshel Gershuni (1932–2020) was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1939. Her first husband was an Israeli Air Force pilot who was killed during the Suez Crisis. In the 1960s, she studied art at the Avni Institute of Art and Design, where she met her second husband, the sculptor and painter Moshe Gershuni, whom she married in 1964.
Eshel Gershuni’s work—spanning sculpture, painting, and jewelry— is characterized by sensuality, theatricality, expressiveness, and a visceral intensity, manifested through richly layered materiality and bold color. She began her artistic path as a ceramicist, studied at the Avni Institute, and later turned to jewelry design, combining precious materials such as gold with simple, inexpensive ones.
Her practice is often associated with feminism, and her visual language is considered both unique and groundbreaking within Israeli art. Her work carries a ritualistic dimension and incorporates Christian motifs influenced by her childhood in Bulgaria. Her deeply personal body of work revolves around the self, revealing an inner, wounded, and bleeding space, while artistic creation also functions for her as a form of self-therapy.
Eshel Gershuni exhibited widely, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2001) and the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod (2025), and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by Israel’s Ministry of Culture and Sport in 2009.
