'Aya sitting', oil on canvas, 63"x63"

Roni was born in 1964 at the Kibbutz Yagur in Israel. Taharlev is the daughter of the Israeli lyricist Yoram Taharlev and the poet and author Nurit Zarchi. In 2012 a self-portrait of hers was included in the BP Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London and was also exhibited in Scotland and Wales. In 2019 her painting Not This Light, the Other Light was selected for the major exhibition The Moon, from Real to Imaginary Voyages at the Grand Palais in Paris, a ‘first’ for an Israeli painter. In 2019 she also had a solo exhibition at the Herzliya Museum for Contemporary Art, titled White Ravens.
Roni's work is in the genre of figurative realist painting, especially portraits. Her work is characterized by a deep knowledge of the classical tradition in European painting through the ages, and by her ability to correspond with this tradition from a position of familiarity while insisting at the same time on a modern-contemporary perspective, thus creating in her paintings over many years a highly personal artistic language.
Roni uses her paintings of figures and portraits to explore fundamental experiences of identity and selfhood in modern Western society, such as the objectification of women, the limits of gender binaries, and the cultural aspiration for determinism versus ambivalence and play.

Grants & Awards
2019 - Artis Art Fund, grant to support work in Berlin
2012 - BP Award, National Portrait Gallery, London
2002 - The Oskar Hendler Prize, Israel
2000 - The Ben Isaac Prize, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1983 - The America Israel Fund Award for Young Artists