Raida Adon was born into a multi-faith family with members representing all three of the religions present in Israel. She studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (1999–2002), the School of Visual Theatre (2001–2002), and the Academy of Music and Dance (2003) in Jerusalem. She began an acting career in 1990, performing in children’s plays and television series. In 2007, she received a prize for developing and nurturing acting talent for her performance in the play Plonter at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv. Since 2000, in addition to appearing in films and series, she has been creating video art projects which deal with religion, identity, and exile.
R. Adon’s video Rebirth (2010) is based on traditional Hindu, Muslim, and Christian death rituals. In the way the artist positions herself in this piece, its iconography is evocative of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Surrounded by women, the artist plays the role of Jesus. A woman washes the artist’s “dead” body in a cleansing ceremony, bringing her back to life, as other women wearing the hijab chant verses from the Quran. After this, we hear a Christian wedding song, recalling the religion’s belief in death as a triumph. This work discusses life and death as two sides of a single coin, intertwining different beliefs surrounding death according to Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. It poses the question of where the soul disappears to, in relation to the body, which undergoes many changes from birth to death, raising philosophical notions including alienation and strangeness.

R. Adon is the first Palestinian artist to present a solo exhibition, Strangeness (2020), at the Israel Museum. It bears the same title as her epic poetic work (2018) dealing with identity, exile, and the search for home. In a narrative sequence consisting of poignant, dreamlike images taking place in a surreal and fantastical environment, it conveys different layers of interpretation: while deeply rooted in the local landscape context, it evokes contrasting feelings of fragility and stability – nomadic and permanent – and oscillates between personal and collective identity, both Palestinian and Israeli.

The artist draws upon rituals of different traditional cultures, not limiting herself to those of the Palestinian people. In Strangeness, she deals with a notion which is not only about national strangeness but also feelings experienced by individuals and perhaps the artist herself, who finds herself alienated in this world.  For this work, R. Adon designeda suitcase which turns into a house, arguing: “I am constantly traveling from place to place, like the suitcase. So I came up with the idea of turning the suitcase into a house. Although it is a beautiful house, it is not the most comfortable.”

R. Adon has been the recipient of the Israel’s Minister of Education and Culture Prize for the Visual Arts (2011) and an exhibition grant at the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University (2022). Her work has also been exhibited at prominent venues, most notably the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2014) and the Villa Emerige in Paris (2012).