Lena Zaidel presents seven drawings of colored chalk on paper. They are each 230x105 cm (90.5x41.3 inches) in size, depicting scenes of Jerusalem, in which packs of wolves roam its streets. The wolves make their way around the city, seemingly at home, while also invaders, crossing holy sites, climbing the Old City´s walls, traversing the Temple Mount plaza, leaping over cars, and passing over construction sites. 

Jerusalem is portrayed as depressed, dirty, abandoned and hostile, a city that barely preserves its past beauty, and its current hallmark is barbed wire. The various sites reflect evidence of human activity - cars, old newspapers, books, even an exhibit catalogue, tinned food, supermarket carts and all sorts of trash. The wolves roam the deserted city both as though it were theirs and as perfect strangers. What is the connection between Jerusalem and wolves? 

The drawings are somewhat reminiscent of scenes from the film Twelve Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam, set in New York after a deadly virus wipes out most of the people. The city is left to wild animals that roam its streets. Jerusalem´s virus rendered it neglected, deserted and diseased, as though its residents were mysteriously expelled and the city was left to predators.

Zaidel chose wolves as an image of a wild, vitalizing force capable of sparking dramatic change in reality and creating a sense of apocalypse, yet it is also stimulating and liberating. Seen from this point of view, Jerusalem´s malaise seeks a remedy. The remedy is the pack of wolves, prowling the city as though it were not the holy, god-fearing city it is, with a millennia-old history, as though it were not a city sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is as though the baggage that the real and the symbolic Jerusalem carry suggests nothing at all to the pack of wolves. Perhaps unintentionally, there is a sense of sacrilege in the drawings. Even a secular, non-religious observer, fidgets uncomfortably at the sight of wolves treating the city as they see fit. Jerusalem - which took nine of the ten measures of beauty that had descended into the world, Jerusalem the golden - is portrayed as a ghost town.