When Uzbekistan-born Nikita Tourdiev arrived in Israel in 1992 on a month-long professional singing tour just before turning 25, she had no intention of staying. She was traveling the world and hoped to live in America.
“I was from the Soviet Union, and until age 20,I could not even leave my country; the border was closed. I left three days after [president Mikhail] Gorbachev opened the borders and spent five years touring Europe and other countries. Israel was part of the tour,” she said.
“And then something happened when I got off the plane. It was a summer night, and I had a feeling that the earth was like a sponge sucking me in. It was a little weird, a very unfamiliar feeling. I just felt at home.”
She had a contract to perform her cabaret-like shows for a month. She prolonged the contract for another month, and then decided to stay permanently. She flew back to Uzbekistan to wrap up her affairs and do the paperwork, arriving in Israel as a new immigrant in October 1993.
Born in Tashkent to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, she split her childhood between Tashkent and Moscow, where her maternal grandmother lived. Her Jewish paternal grandmother, from Odessa, was married to a Muslim man.
“I was never connected to Judaism, but a friend who is a rabbi once told me that I’m a lost Jewish soul,” she said. “And I’m discovering I am totally Zionist.”
Making a living in Israel in the arts
Realizing the difficulty of making a living as a singer in Israel, she began working in graphic arts.
“And then a miracle happened. A friend suggested I make jewelry. As crazy as it sounds, I said ‘Okay.’” I made jewelry out of anything I saw, like shells and stones, not traditional jewelry. It was a kind of substitute for singing because it felt like music to me,” she said.
Soon she was doing exhibitions and accepting commissions. On on occasion, when she arrived at the Tiroche Auction House in Herzliya wearing some of her bracelets, she was asked to place them in the auction. She sold 10 pieces. Another time, she was commissioned to fashion jewelry out of trash for a movie. “It’s an intriguing process to turn a pile of garbage into a beautiful thing,” she marveled.
In 1999, she applied to the Omanit School for Jewelry Design in Tel Aviv in mid-semester. “They accepted me and asked me to bring my tools – and here I am, coming with a manicure set. It was very funny, but that’s what I used to make my jewelry.”
The academy placed some of her pieces in the display window of a Jerusalem hotel gift shop, which helped to fuel her success. She “made a lot of crazy things, like a crown for a beauty contest. I called them wearable sculptures.”
Despite her sudden decision to live in Israel, she never lost her wanderlust. She started her life in Israel residng briefly in Kibbutz Ginegar and has lived in 16 cities over the past 32 years. She has also traveled extensively, from Brazil to China and many places in between.
After 10 years in Israel, she decided to fulfill her dream of living in America. For three years, she plied her jewelry trade in the United States, starting in Los Angeles and moving to Las Vegas, Miami, and then Connecticut. But the experience disappointed her.
“I always felt it was not my place. It didn’t feel like freedom; it seemed more like the Soviet Union. I was never relaxed or feeling at home. I felt a thread pulling me back to Israel all the time,” she recounted.
When she returned to Israel, she recalled, “I was dancing for 11 hours on the plane. I was so happy! I couldn’t wait to see the coastline come into view.”
SHE OPENED her own shop on Kikar Hamedina in Tel Aviv and later near the Diamond Exchange. After almost 20 years of jewelry-making, she transitioned to large sculptures. She was commissioned by the Helping Hand Coalition, which assists Holocaust survivors, to create a sculpture. It was presented to Pope Francis in 2022 and was exhibited in the Vatican’s Holocaust Museum. It is now in the pope’s personal library.
In 2019, she opened a jewelry and sculpture studio in Neveh Tzedek. When the COVID pandemic hit, she had to shut her doors temporarily.
“I was really missing color during that very scary time,” she recalled, so right after the first quarantine, she bought canvases and started creating acrylic paintings. These works sold well when she was able to reopen her shop.
“I moved to Kadima and opened a big studio there. I still make jewelry and sculptures, and I paint a lot – mostly big canvases, a meter or two. I’ve had my paintings in many galleries and exhibitions,” she said.
Ben Ami paints extemporaneously, depending on how she feels at the moment.
She will have a three-week exhibition at the Salome Gallery in Jaffa, opening on April 1, with the grand opening event at noon on April 5. Among the works will be a series she created in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the subsequent war.
The show is titled “The Other Side of the Canvas: The Story Untold.” The paintings will be hung on glass walls to show two sides of canvases; the “other side” depicts her life story in pictures.
Ben Ami currently lives in Netanya near her father, 85, who made aliyah in 2000 and led cancer research labs at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Bar-Ilan University, and Hadassah-University Medical Center.
Her studio is called Happy Place, but her “happy place” changes often. “I can never stay in one place for a long. I am an artist, so I like to experience new things,” she explained. “When I do something new, I go all the way. You can only get a sense of something when you go really deep and understand it in your body and soul.”
Her latest obsession is Japanese drumming. She has always liked Japanese culture. In fact, she has a Japanese Shiba Inu dog along with two cats. One day, an ad popped up on Facebook for a drumming class at Taiko Life Israel. “I enrolled immediately, and it’s been one of the best experiences of my life,” she enthused.
She now teaches at the Taiko Life Academy and plays in Taiko Life’s professional ensemble. She is preparing for a performance on April 4, the day before her exhibition’s grand opening.
Her surname, Ben Ami, is a remnant from a short-lived marriage. With the blessing of her ex-husband, she kept the name because its meaning, “son of my people,” resonates with her.
“If someone asks me to describe my feelings about Israel, I say that even when everything seems bad, I still feel something good. I chose this country, and it’s my home.”
Nikita Ben Ami: From Uzbekistan to Kibbutz Ginegar, 1993