American painter Kehinde Wiley’s project, The World Stage: Israel is comprised of portraits of young Israeli men of diverse backgrounds: Ethiopian-Israeli Jews, native-born Jews, and Arab-Israelis. Like the other bodies of work in The World Stage series, Wiley focuses his attention on local youth culture in a country with unique political and historical importance. For his Israeli works, he embedded each contemporary portrait in a background inspired by traditional Jewish ceremonial papercuts. For Alios Itzhak, Wiley adapted a cut-out nineteenth-century Ukrainian mizrah from the Jewish Museum’s own collection as the background for the figure.