Lena Zaidel / The Wolve’s Song.
Curator: Anat Gorel-Rorberger.
December 18, 2025 – February 7, 2026. Tel Aviv Artists House
Wolves as an energetic and healing force \ Anat Goral-Rorberger
“The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal’s look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look.”[1]
Lena Zaidel is a Jerusalem based artist. She is a wolf shaman. Her wolves are positive, restorative, they can be seen throughout the streets of Jerusalem and its many sacred sites, as well as the city’s gas stations and main streets. Zaidel’s Jerusalem is, in a sense, a Jerusalem of the Heavens. It is tied to the intense spirituality that envelopes Zaidel’s unique personality. She pours the spiritual worlds and meditation she had studied into her many years of artistic exploration of wolves. She has been through a lot and has put them through a lot along the way—an apocalypse, the immediate end of the world, religious connections and secular contexts. Asphalt and sanctity. Dirt and gold. A Paz gas station is simply a golden station at the heart of darkness. The urbanity of industrial areas, barbed wire fences, waste and filth. Throughout history, Man has learned to fear the wolf’s dark, free, threatening image. Zaidel disperses these anxieties; her wolves give us hope, they purify the modern world, as they are a form of an ancient totem that was reborn in Israeli reality in Jerusalem—holy to three religions and torn between them. Instead of fear, Zaidel offers hope for change and cleansing. She unleashes packs of wolves unto our urban reality to undermine the outdated evils and to impose a new therapeutic energy. This is a wolf-led world where humans are the minority, and nature—with its literal and poetical wolves, sculpted lions and flying fish—is the ruler and herald.
I became aware of Lena Zaidel when collecting materials for the exhibition I curated: Whose (Still) Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf (Tel Aviv Artists House, 2024).
Zaidel’s work was featured in an exhibition where she displayed large, colorful works depicting the holy places of Jerusalem. For example, The Dome of the Rock with charging wolves against a deep blue background. Blue is the color of dreams. It is not about realism. The Dome of the Rock is sprinkled with gold, the gold of the heavens against the mundane dirt of the earth.
In addition, she presented a small sculpture of herself embracing a wolf, fashioned after the Christian Pieta. Zaidel is a motherly, shielding figure. She is infinitely meticulous, but there’s an apparent tongue-in-cheek there, to relieve the tension. She was educated in St. Petersburg, her hometown, and has contributed the joy of hard work to the Israeli landscape, without being too strict. She has an air of humor around her, which adds some perspective and circumvents a sense of pomposity.
Never having encountered wolves herself, Zaidel developed great expertise of the furry predators. I did not find any criticism, anxiety or mixed feelings in regard to wolves. On the contrary; born in Leningrad in Russia and immigrating to Israel with her parents at 13 years old, Zaidel developed a positive and almost mystical relationship with wolves.
This affinity began when she was commissioned to paint a wolf for a mutual friend of hers and her husband’s—Oded Zaidel—a bank manager whose name, not coincidentally, is Vladimir (a Slavic name that bears a reference to the Russian pronunciation of wolf: volk). He wanted to hang the drawing in his office.
Zaidel, who had then gone through a long period of painting friends’ and colleagues’ portraits—and was known for her talent for detail—accepted the request and became captivated.
Oded gifted her a book about wolves, and at the same time she was researching online for literature, nature films, art and cinema for imagery and information about wolves.
That portrait led to her first series of wolves – long, narrow and energetic, exhibited as a dynamic ensemble at the Jerusalem Artists House, 2003. [2]
The pieces were displayed there in a powerful sequence that simulated movement, creating an energetic dizziness. According to Zaidel, the message was so strong that young children recoiled in fear from the wolves “leaping” at them from the walls.
Now I will address Lena Zaidel’s biography. As mentioned, she was born in Leningrad, studied painting from a young age and internalized Russian work practices of listening and paying close attention to every subtle nuance. In her words, it is a commitment to focus, to details—a respect for the creative act and part of the Soviet ideology that sanctifies work and its integrity.
According to her, work is a sacred thing for which we are responsible. This is the way children are brought up—whether it’s tying their shoelaces or pouring tea, they are educated to strive for excellence.
Zaidel’s parents also come from the world of art. Her mother, Olga Rabinowitz, was a ballet dancer at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg until the age of 27. Later, she worked at documentary film studios. Upon arriving in Israel, she went on to work at Berke Film Studios in Givatayim.
Felix Rabinowitz, her father, was a camera engineer and an amateur photographer. He taught Zaidel to develop and print black and white photographs in the darkroom he built in their bathroom. In Israel, he worked as a camera engineer at Herzliya Studios. The family’s friends also came from various artistic fields, which influenced Zaidel’s creative soul as well.
Zaidel vividly remembers visits to The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg with her mother, where she first came face-to-face with 18th and 19th century works of Russian and European masters. She was particularly struck by Russian painter Karl Bryullov’s painting The Last Day of Pompeii. In regard to another iconic painting displayed there, it was believed that anyone who looked at the serpent in Fyodor Bruni’s epic The Brazen Serpent would be saved, and those who did not would fall victim to its deadly power. Young Zaidel saw in these, and other paintings, a sort of film filled with intricate details, many of which seemed to predict great catastrophes.
These themes suited the perception of the Russian spirit: running, energy, revolutions and red flags. Zaidel keeps returning to a literary image that has influenced her work on wolves: Danko, the protagonist of Maxim Gorky’s Danko’s Burning Heart [3] which Zaidel came to know in an animated film version as a child. Danko leads a group of people on a long and torturous road, without heat or light. As a last resort, he pulls out his burning heart to light their way. The group is saved and Danko dies, but his heart remains. Zaidel may have translated this dynamic movement of the burning heart into a dynamic pack of wolves, spreading light and guiding those who seek hope and positive change.
Lena Zaidel moved to Israel at 13 years old. She studied at Thelma Yellin High School of Arts. She completed her BA in Visual Communication at the Bezalel Academy, which she considered to be a comprehensive art education. During her studies she acquired a profession and stayed on for additional studies at the Department of Fine Arts.
After her studies she worked as a designer of books, newspapers and magazine covers. She taught graphic design, drawing, illustration, painting and sculpting.
Later she began studying meditation and also taught it in home circles. She refers to this as ‘psychic reading’. She explains that during her sessions she goes into a light trance and provides answers to the seeker’s questions. Naturally, spirituality follows her throughout all of her creative process. Zaidel’s wolves are also meditative. They bring a trance-like atmosphere as they charge throughout Jerusalem and other holy and secular sites, spreading their cleansing and uplifting energy.
This is the place to mention Sigmund Freud’s famous patient the ‘Wolf-Man’ (Sergei Konstantinovich Pankejeff) and his “wolf tree”. Pankejeff would dabble with painting and created the iconic Tree of Wolves which appeared to him in a dream. The painting depicts seven white wolves perched on a tree, all gazing at him. Freud, who studied dreams, ultimately concluded that as a child, he had witnessed his parents engaging in a sexual act at night, which resulted in him experiencing significant trauma.
It should be noted that throughout history the wolf became a mythical figure, tied to various legends that reflect historical and period-specific themes. For example, in stories by the Brothers Grimm (Little Red Riding Hood, The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats), as well as in the famous legend of the Capitoline she-wolf, who suckled the twin brothers Romulus and Remus. She became an enduring symbol of Rome, the city that Romulus and Remus later founded.
Historically, the wolf and the dog share a common origin; one became the first animal to be domesticated by man, while the other, the wolf, remained wild, free, living in packs and not submitted to man. Therefore, it became synonymous with freedom, fear and power. Its strong build, golden eyes and piercing howl contributed to its threatening image, which persists to this day. This is expressed in the fear from lupus disease, myths about people being bitten and becoming werewolves, the expression “crying wolf” which became a proverbial saying referring to the idea that if you falsely raise the alarm too many times, at a moment of true danger (a real wolf) the cry for help will be ignored. And, of course, there are plenty of fantastical TV series for teens, like Teen Wolf, Raised by Wolves, and others.
In Ingmar Bergman’s seminal film Hour of the Wolf, the story takes place around the hour between day and night, light and darkness, in which a kind of metamorphosis takes place between a wolf and a dog, and they become indistinguishable. The uniqueness of the light in this hour is also mentioned in the Talmud [4], describing it is an hour when there is no light and no darkness, when you cannot distinguish between dog and wolf. There is a blessed ambiguity in which everything is possible.
Lena Zaidel was unimpressed by the prevailing myths surrounding wolves. To her the wolf symbolizes a life force, an energetic medicine for despair and stagnation. Through the wolves, the force of creativity and change entered her life with more intensity. It began with personal transformation, and later expander into a broader social and political context, as she unleashed packs of wolves to awaken Jerusalem from its centuries-old stagnation.
Zaidel creates an apocalyptic reality within the urban landscape—one that is aging, peeling, fossilized, and entrenched in outdated beliefs. Jerusalem of the three religions must also shake off its prejudices and spirits from its historical past, and Zaidel enables this transformation through the packs of wolves depicted in the canonical series she has worked on over the years.
Much like Jeff Beuys [5], who staged a performance where he locked himself in a room with a large coyote, and wrapped himself in a felt blanket, equipped only with a copper staff (the coyote never harmed him), Zaidel can also be seen as a kind of modern wolf shepherd. Through her work she channels light, renewal and hope for change. Beuys claimed he had a spiritual interaction with the coyote, and as a result saw himself as a shaman.
It’s not only Jerusalem’s holy sites, including The Valley of the Cross that had fascinated Zaidel, that appear in her wolf paintings. Over time, Zaidel descended into daily reality and started placing her wolves in industrial areas near her home, at yellow gas stations that remind her of the color gold (paz), and among fences and landfills which can be seen in her series All the Places are Holy (2005-2008) and her following series Broken Hearted City Center (2008-2010). In both of these series, Zaidel addresses the religious fracture in Jerusalem, showing that in an abundance of holiness, true holiness is lost. The presence of the wolf imparts a sense of sanctity across all levels, that is why Zaidel illustrates the city using a blend of charcoal and gold, symbolizing duality. This can be seen at the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall, but also in places like the Mashbir department store, King George St., a Magen David Adom ambulance, and a hotel with the significant name “Heart of Jerusalem”.
This is the familiar urban landscape of Jerusalem which Zaidel shatters to pieces, only to be mended and rebuilt. The compositions are broken and then reassembled, cut with diagonal lines that slice her monochromatic illustrations and shine a light on the heartbreak that the city of Jerusalem continues to endure throughout its many historical reincarnations.
Thus, Zaidel manages to integrate her apocalyptic wolf imagery into everyday life. The wolves surround her wherever she looks. This is also true in the streets of Jerusalem, where the sacred and the mundane always blend, as well as in family portraits and other series such as The Wolves of Branches (2015-2017), The Artist’s Wife (2017-2018), a sort of homage to herself, continuing with tributes to artists like Moshe Castel, Man Ray, Gaudí, and Miró (2018-2021).
At the start of her exploration of Jerusalem’s landscapes, giant flying fish also appeared alongside the wolves. Zaidel was thinking of the end of days that had already metaphorically struck Jerusalem, “J-m” is short for water (Mayim) and sea (yam), so we are all immersed in water, wolves, fish, and humans, walking through it. The people, flooded with water, are completely unaware of the multitude of creatures around them. They walk the streets with glazed eyes—an end of the world gaze.
The Zaidel I came to know is a deep and disciplined artist. The wolves she paints in oil, charcoal, and dry pastel, are constant companions on her journey through life. Zaidel’s wolf is not a totem on a pedestal but a life force. She skillfully characterizes it as such, even when her works are dark and somber, illuminated only by her own bright, blazing red hair—a kind of substitute for fire, an internalized light. Her works may be heavy in theme, but her persona is vital, and there is energy and movement in her art, offering an optimistic message for new beginnings. These are lives not frozen in stagnation but driven by a constant hope for action, optimism, and a promise of good after the apocalyptic tragedies of our times—a form of catharsis on earth.
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