Moshe Tarka was born in Ethiopia in 1981. At the age of three, he immigrated with his family to Israel via Sudan in Operation Moses. He lives in Gan Yavne and works in Tel Aviv. Holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from Sapir Academic College, Sderot (2011). Recipient of the 2008 Ashdod Young Artist Award in the Visual Arts category (chairman of the prize committee: Yona Fischer). arka is a multidisciplinary artist whose oeuvre spans paintings, sculptures, mixed media reliefs, painting installations, and other techniques.

His works result from research into his personal identity as a black-Jewish-Israeli artist. The personal position stems from a broader socio-political stance, which is sometimes manifested in works that protest the white Israeli hegemony.

His works address the encounter between matter and form. The processing of the material is often associated with the dialogue between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, and with the tension between painting and relief.

His artistic style corresponds with traditional African art and with street art, and is characterized by primitivism, exaggeration, expressiveness, the grotesque, and black humor.

His work comprises several major, ongoing series, including Dialogue (2013–21), which is based on an exchange between two figures, delving into the limitations of interpersonal human communication; and Creation (2019–21), which is centered on the journey of immigration to Israel and the stratified identity of the artist and his community as it pertains to the meaning of being “black” in Israel.

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