Luni / Ilana Portnoy is a visual artist whose work explores humanity as it exists before cultural definition. Born in Israel in 1995 to a family of immigrants from Belarus who fled following the Chernobyl disaster, she grew up between cultures - an experience that shaped her sensitivity to belonging and individuality. She earned a B.Des in Visual Communication from Shenkar College in 2020, where she created Luni: a recurring figure living in nature, stripped of social roles, religion, symbols, and imposed identities. Working through a reduced, symbolic, archetypal visual language, Portnoy seeks forms that can be read universally, beyond cultural, religious, or social frameworks. Set within natural landscapes, Luni is painted through a tension between classical figurative traditions and flat, symbolic form. The figures represent human states.

Some figures remain without gender, while others include simple sexual characteristics - not as social identity, but as biological presence. Gender, when present, does not define the figure.

Through Luni, Portnoy invites viewers to encounter a state of being that precedes categorization - where the body is present, meaning remains open, and humanity comes before separation.