Alona Harpaz from Berlin

“I fell in love with Berlin as soon as I 
arrived here 13 years ago. It’s an amazing place that has everything: nature, city, 
museums, art. My husband, who I first met in India, is a German citizen, and 
we live with our two children in Prenz­lauer Berg. It really is the perfect environment for me as an artist. Everyone has 
the freedom to be who they are here. I originally studied photography in Jerusalem and New York, but nowadays I am above all a painter, though not in the classical sense. When I talk about my art, I prefer 
to call it ‘painted surfaces’. I work in my own studio and have just finished preparing an exhibition for Japan. I am also 
very involved in the Circle 1 gallery which 
I co-founded together with a group of 
Israeli artists in Berlin. Our countries’ common history makes me, as an Israeli, feel closer to Berlin in a special way. 
But the past is not the decisive factor in my everyday life here, or in my relationships with German people.”