The exhibition is a song of praise to wonder women, those magnificent women who do everything faultlessly…and on high heels.

Newsprint is the natural habitat of comics and cartoons. By definition, a cartoon is a fast and flereaction to the day’s news – the antithesis of going on show as a museum exhibit. Cartoonist work at top speed, and send off their output as computer files to their editors; this ensures the relevance and freshness of their work, which is in a dialogue with the zeitgeist. Another difference from a museum display is that one page out of an entire comic story can’t offer museum visitors a meaningful experience. And yet, when the Negev Museum of Art suggested we present an exhibition there, we took on the challenge of entering a museum. We sent out a call for submissions to artists, and brainstormed the concept of Wonder Woman. Towards the end of the process, we created joint works – even though we’ve all been working for years in our own little rooms, each one using a specific technique, to meet the editor’s deadline and the printing machines.

The artists interpreted Biblical texts to create original one-off works with an inherent idea, statement, and aesthetic values. With the boldness of real Wonder Women, we broke through the black lines which frame comics panels and tried out new media, like painting, sketching, sculpture, and video art.

Over two decades ago, Israeli cartoonists joined forces with comics artists, and founded a shared association, spurred by their love of illustrating and a sense of shared destiny. Israel’s boundaries, as we know, are constantly shifting, and so are the boundaries of local artists, since many cartoonists illustrate comics columns’ features and even graphic novels, and vice versa.

“So what’s Wonder Woman for you?” we inquired of our colleagues. Who is she? How is she perceived in our cultural history, in Israeli national history, and as a philosophical concept – the mighty woman, primordial woman, the Great Mother?

Some artists created their own take on the biblical verse: ‘Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all’ (Proverbs, 31: 29). Others got to grips with Biblical heroines like Jael and Miriam. For others, Wonder Woman is that woman who redeemed herself through the Zionist vision, and yet others interpreted Wonder Woman as the postmodern woman, whose power is unassailable. Many found their inspiration in the character of Wonder Woman, a comics magazine popular character since the 1940s. All participants in the exhibition have their very own, original wonder woman. She can level political criticism, is sometimes sarcastic, and amiable at other times.

The exhibition is a song of praise to wonder women, those magnificent women who do everything faultlessly…and on high heels.