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In 2006 I interviewed the Israeli designer Yossi Lemel for a zine that I created called Damn Magazine. The zine is long since defunct but my interview with Yossi. Yossi Lemel is best known for his controversial posters about the Israel/Palestine conflict. He was incredibly open about his work and a real pleasure to talk to.

Atosha: Thanks for talking to us today. When you finished design school, you went and worked for a company for like three years, was it?
Yossi: Actually it was one and a half years as an employee and then there was a crisis, an economical crisis in Israel, like 22 years ago and suddenly I found my self out, out in the open air, and then I realised, because I wanted to be secure I decided to be dependent on myself, and then I became a freelancer for some years and then I opened a studio, then I grew and I opened an advertising agency and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger and when over 30 people already and I sold it, I sold my company and started again, I mean i was at home for a while, and then I started again and now I have ten people and I think its like a natural biological process that you grow some how and I don’t know what to do with it. I mean maybe at a certain point I will sell again, but for the moment I’m quite happy with the status.

A: Yeah, it just seems to grow and when it doesn’t interest you any more you move onto something else.
Y: Yes, its because when it’s more like an industry then I’m not, I’m losing interest somehow. I mean the purpose of the the whole thing is business yeah, the purpose is to make more and more money. And somehow I don’t know, I feel I need meaning to my work, that’s what I’m looking for, meaning. You know philosophically, not cynically the meaning of life. Not cynically because I have a lot of cynical abilities. Even in life, because the older you get the more cynical you become. I think.

A: So when you started your own company and you went out as a freelancer, if there was an economical crisis in Israel at the time, was it hard to get jobs at that point?
Y: It was hard, but you know we have ups and downs for example like four years ago there was a very big crisis in Israel, for example, now there is an amazing , flourishing, like unbelievable, Its so good now, so I don’t know there are all kinds of lows in economics, like waves, So now its good, i mean its connected to the market in the world, in America, internationally, there’s a connection with the Palestinians, with the high tech, all kinds of things.

A: Yeah, well do you plan, now that you’ve been through a couple of the waves do you plan for the hard times?
Y: Yes, i’m preparing myself. I mean for the moment its unbelievable, I mean the stock market is crazy. Its great for the rich, well everywhere, capitalism is on one hand probably the best solution for modern society, on the other hand the price is unbearable and the gap is getting bigger and bigger. and more like we are talking about just families ion each country and even families in the world who have control of everything.

A: The more political posters that you do, the ones with meaning behind it, just a couple of questions about them, do you self publish them?
Y: Sometimes I have to pay, i mean for some posters are just art in a way, not sponsored by anyone so i’m paying, paying for the printing and this is why it’s so good to have an advertising agency on the side because that’s it, you understand. So I have two careers that are bound together, on one hand i have to support my family, I have three children so i need a steady job and on the other hand i have this art career which i have to feed, so it’s going from one side to the other, and its like two sides of the brain, one side is the practical and work and the other side is art. I have to juggle with those two sides.

A: Yeah, well sometimes they meet.
Y: Sometimes they meet like amnesty international, all the campaigns, or like with green peace now, that we did a campaign for Chernobyl 20 years, so i don’t know if you’ve had the chance to see but we did a campaign here in Israel also in turkey and Malta and Lebanon, in the Mediterranean. So its an ideological campaign, a political campaign, environmental campaign and also art. its a combination a successful combination.

A: It must feel really good to get paid to do your art.
Y: it is! in this case its really like if someone has something to say then i say its art, don’t interfere with my work I’m an artist! ha, so i have total freedom.

A: How are your posters received in Israel? Some of your more political posters?
Y: The work, i mean Israel on one hand is very liberal and its eh a democracy, and in a democracy i can do anything i want but when it comes to religion issues for example its very hard, for example the occasion of the visit of the pope in 2000 i made a poster for amnesty international that had ultimate political prisoner which was Jesus, and it was rejected by amnesty here because they were afraid of the reaction from the religious groups. Just because it was suppose to be out in the streets so they didn’t have the courage to do it. because Jesus Christ is like a red flag to some groups. For example. So to then its a symbol. I mean sometimes for example i did a poster like ten years ago or more, “who is a Jew”, i don’t know if you have heard of it before? who is a Jew shows you, you see pubic hair and its a triangle and there is another triangle and then you get the star of David, ok, and then its a very problematic question, who is a Jew? according to the Jewish law just someone whose mother is Jewish. so when your mother is not Jewish but your father is Jewish are you not Jewish, all kinds of things, like when you want to convert they are giving you hard time all kinds of things. its a very provocative, it was a very provocative work against the religious establishment, which is very strict. so of course it was under the belt by all means.

A: Yes and how was it received?
Y: there was a big scandal about it, so when I’m talking about the provocations and i do provocations and when it comes to religion, it’s really like you can make it, but um i don’t it just from time to time, its not my goal. I’m more into talking about political, i mean basically my work is provocative. its built in because otherwise you have such competition from every where, its like unbelievable competition, television, billboards, radio, whatever, every where, newspapers magazines, you are under a constant attack, visuals slogans, therefore you have to be very dramatic, very powerful in order to get attention.

A: Even just having a controversial opinion to put across will make a poster provocative.
Y: Yes, I guess, I’m not like, I’m not here to do just nice things, there is a clear division between designers or artists that are doing nice things, looking at the nice things in life which I’m not one of them and there are artists that look at the ugly side of life and visuals and I’m on this side.

A: Having said that your posters are beautiful, even when they are being provocative. Your type is so clean, what influences do you have?
Y: If you, the point when, if your too blunt, too aggressive the reaction is repulsive and you don’t get the message, you don’t get the certain point with people when they will not look at your work, because its too aggressive, i check their borders, the borders for example those amputated hands shaking hands which is very, when you look at it at the size of one meter 8 by meter 20, its a big piece, is so sort of alive and bloody, unpleasant but this is the meaning, because, its a trick, it looks very smooth and clean even and then you get this hit, so its a total, sometimes a trap. it keeps your attraction, and you are able to look at it and then the message is infiltrating slowly, sometimes it takes like a minute or two, to really get all the meanings that of what i meant. because sometimes, this is research for your question on whether you can be understood everywhere, the answer is yes but not always, at least one or two meanings you get, sometimes when its a local problem like who is a jew, which i could talk about for half an hour, you get the provocation, you get the idea that its suppose to be provocative and subversive, you get it, but you don’t get the whole picture, sometimes you get everything, like for example the work blood bath, which was Israel Palestine 2000, so this work is, you get first of all the immediate reaction, blood bath, which is very chilling on one hand, and like total clean, and it looks Japanese, and then when you get inside to the meaning. Like a bombing attack on in hotel somewhere in one of the cities, the floor was covered all with blood and this gave me this inspirational bloodbath, this is a historical reason and it was my personal feeling of the situation four years ago and also its talking about the ritual of committing suicide, like a ritual, its a mutual ritual of both nations that are dealing with self destruction and also the bath looks like the smallest room in the house which is the small country in the Mediterranean, its shape, its long shape, its like a metaphor of Israel and Palestine, its all like connected, its a morgue, its all connected, its also connected to my personal history, my memories of my father from the concentration camps. which is why subconsciously i did so many works which now I know I am conscious of that deal with the doves in the jar which looks like medical experiments, or the seam line, you know with the open flesh, you know scenes like this that are from medical, and this is why I guess you saw my project from last year with my father in the concentration camps, where he was an inmate, I guess its all connected, the past, the present, and the future are all connected with this history.

A: How did it feel to go to the concentration camps?
Y: It was hell, by all means hell. going back to hell, look at, going back to look at the devils eyes, you know, one on one. i tried to look at the horror as maximum as i could. in the same way of course its just a metaphor but i was there in minus 20 degrees in the pajama of my father, and i realised that after an hour just to be there, just in the risk, the unbearable cold, the wind, you can die after an hour, just from the cold, not by hungry, disease, humiliation all kinds of killings, just by standing there. so its all, i have this experience of the horrors there, but i had to do it in order to understand the history, because its a hole, i have a black hole we all second generation of the holocaust survivors we have alot of um, because we don’t have history, all our history is gone, i don’t know how my grandfather looked like, i have nothing, no traces nothing. i grew up without a family, both on my mother’s side and my father’s side. there were hundreds of people, you know my mother had 9 brothers and sisters, all are gone and the same as my father, both his sister and his brother, his brother and mother and uncle its all like a whole world was gone totally, evacuated totally, totally, so i had to deal with it it, its like an excuse to go through a project through clean cold project to be analogies without getting into, with out losing your mind. understand, its a way a tool of getting back there and going back there, and trying to find out and what happened.

A: What did your father think of the idea?
Y: He was, he supported me, I mean with out him I couldn’t do it, he was guiding me to the places through the phone, all like we are talking now, i talked to him for hours, at length and you know this was an achievement this achievement was the ability to talk to my father. directly, without, because i was like analyzing this from sort of outside. because its not me there sort of, its someone else. understand? so i had this ability to go out of myself, look at this situation, because i was busy with directing the scenes and really study the subject. so through this educational or whatever this investigational process, i could step aside and look at it, like as a guest.

A: Did your father talk about it when you were younger or was this kind of the first time he talked about it?
Y: He talked about it, but like flashes, you know from time to time, short story here, short story there, I never had the whole picture, it was, I couldn’t realise what really happened, chronologically, so I had to do this journey back in order to understand, to get the whole picture. and through this I could really talk to him like really I got alot of new details, even after 60 years he wrote some like 20 pages, for the first time, so i could er, this is an achievement. to know what happened, like being a witness, he was a witness and i am also a witness. i took the role of transferring the message to the next generation.

A: Have you talked to your kids about it now? How old are you children?
Y: My son is 10, he is still young, we are starting to talk about it now, my daughter is 6, and my youngest son is nearly 3 so they are still young, but I know they are already, my son has this, i know he has this load, heavy weight, I don’t know how to say it, heaviness. because it is a trauma that has gone so deep, its like atom bomb, its not going to go away overnight, when i opened my exhibition in Berlin last year, i said i think it will take another 2000 years. so you grow up with it, i grew up with it and my son will grow up with it. without even seeing/saying it. we don’t have to say it, its a trauma, trauma of a nation, trauma that’s going with the memory of the nation.

A: Yeah, I wrote you a quote in the email that you had said at school you realised that ” ‘they’ are not all devils” and you began your mission to fight racism, 20 years or so on, are your reassessing this goal? And how do you think you have done so far?! would you like to talk about that?
Y: Yes, yes, i mean i also educate my children, and my pupils, and my students, racism is the father and mother of all evil, and we have to fight against it all the time, every morning we have to fight against it, its part of our nature to not be able to accept the other one, you know the differences in people you know like, sex, colour, religion, its mother of all sins or father of all sins, and we have to fight against it. its a daily war, and maybe you never win but you have to fight, you have to educate and i believe it is possible, i believe that we can do it.

A: That’s very positive of you,
Y: Yes, yes, yes, I mean without it I wouldn’t have children, I believe in the future, I have to believe in the future.

A: Can you explain what the cactus means, you use the cactus a lot
Y: Yes, the cactus is the sabra, sabra is the nick name of the Israelis, this is a plant that grows in Israel every where, it use to be like a fence in the fields, you know like marking your territory, so the people that were born in Israel they are called sabras, like the cactus, so its a national symbol, like you have the kangaroo, I use not a lot of symbols, I use very simple symbols like the star of David or a cross or a sabra, or a dove, you know, and i just juggle with those, basically what i do is simple connections that create a new meaning, so that is like i always say that i create a language, so its like i have 20 something, like in a language like you know you have 26 letters so the sabra is like the letter k for example, so with the letter k and i take another letter a or another l which is the star of David and i combine it, and i create a new word, that’s what i do. and that is what the kasbala, i don’t know if you know that Kabala, which is the Jewish philosophy, its talking about combinations, this is the whole secret about combinations, the secret, the creating, with god the creator, created through combinations of letters. I do with visuals the same.

A: Who are your biggest influences then?
Y: First of all Rene Magritte, which has a Jewish thinking, he is not Jewish but i mean i’m using like quotation marks. He was one of my biggest influences, I think he is influencing every where all the modern design, modern advertising is all very very much connected, with this language. this is on one hand, on the other hand there is John Hartfield, which was the German designer that was acting against the Nazi regime, he was very also provocative and political. I discovered him like 25 years ago and really i think he’s the pioneer in the fighting against of the political evil.

A: Last question then, which piece/poster are you the most proud of?
Y: Which? oh that’s a very hard question, its very hard to answer this because like every, there are some that i like because i don’t know, that are good. but its like children you know, you create something and its a creation, you are attached to this work, so it can be a life saver with a condom on one hand on the other hand there are there are posters i don’t show you, funny posters, its very, i cannot tell you, i have some favourites but not like one that, its very hard to like to say ok this is me, because there are people like this, i don’t want to, i never, i was afraid always to have like one visual that will, i think i have alot, there are a lot that i think are good. that i like, i don’t know if they are good but i like them. and i want to be remembered with multi visuals, not just one, i don’t want to be a one trick pony.

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