“Forty years ago, this was an army camp,” says Ilanit Bronstein, one of 15 talented members of the Vidor Artist Colony in Zuqim, a small town in Israel’s Arava region south of the Dead Sea.

She knocks on the wall of her TelePele studio to demonstrate the solid construction of the former military installation.

“When Zuqim was established [in 2001], they didn’t know what to do with this complex. It’s hard to break because it’s thick concrete. So instead of destroying it, they made it into an artist village about 15 years ago.”