Nomi Tannhauser, who immigrated to Israel at the age of five, lives in Jerusalem. She studied graphic design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and completed an MA in art education. She is the co-founder of Antea, a feminist art gallery, the first of its kind in the country (active between 1994-2009). Her preliminary artistic projects were in graphic design, creating posters protesting violence against women; at the same time, she was active in feminist protests advocating for the rights of women. After a year-long stay in New York in 1984, she turned to painting, while also working in other media, such as print, drawing and plasticine.

Her four-decade career could be divided into three phases. The first, between 1990 and 2006, depicted marginalised groups, including Haredi (Jewish Ultra-Orthodox) women and Palestinian women, such as in the painting Walk (1990-1995). Through this series of paintings, based on photographs, she contemplated her own identity as an outsider, an immigrant in the state of Israel. In the next phase, between 2007 and 2015, she began painting from direct observation in front of a mirror and depicted her own body, mostly semi-clothed, such as in the work Blue Bra (2011). In this period N. Tannhauser raised questions about time and the temporality of the body that changes with age, while presenting her view of her own body that may have become alien to her over time. In the third phase the artist shifted to the depiction of her family members and also turned to a rich and multi-layered dialogue with masterpieces from the history of art, such as her oil painting After Cindy (2015), which refers to photographer Cindy Sherman (1954-).

N. Tannhauser has taken part in several group exhibitions, both in Israel and abroad, and she has also mounted solo exhibitions in Israel. One of the most prominent solo exhibitions is Shibolet [Oats], in which she dealt with questions of immigration, femininity, childhood and adolescence, while discussing issues of identity in the context of Israel. The exhibition included her works from the first period in which the artist depicted veiled women and young girls, and works in which she used the image of the oat, such as Girls in Wide Filed #2 (2003). This exhibition was presented twice, first in 2006 by Yaniv Shapira at the Artspace Gallery in Jerusalem, and at the well-established institution Mishkan Museum of Art, situated in Kibbutz Ein Harod.

N. Tannhauser’s works are part of important collections such as The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and in the private collections of Nancy Berman and Sagi Refael in the United States. Over the years N. Tannhauser has won many prizes for her artistic achievements. In addition to her creative path, she is also an active curator, mounting exhibitions that deal with gender and feminism and she writes and produces catalogues and books about feminist Israeli art. The most recent, co-edited with Rita Mendes-Flohr, titled Her Dress, Her Symbol (2022).