Yael Bartana
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Biography
Born 1970 in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel
Lives and works in Berlin and AmsterdamYael Bartana is an observer of the contemporary and a pre-enactor. She employs art as a scalpel inside the mechanisms of power structures and navigates the fine and crackled line between the sociological and the imagination. Over the past twenty years, she has dealt with some of the dark dreams of the collective unconscious and reactivated the collective imagination, dissected group identities and (an-)aesthetic means of persuasion. In her films, installations, photographs, staged performances and public monuments Yael Bartana investigates subjects like national identity, trauma, and displacement, often through ceremonies, memorials, public rituals and collective gatherings.
Under the title Thresholds, Bartana co-represented Germany alongside theatre director Ersan Mondtag at the Venice Biennale 2024. This is the second time Bartana is representing a country other than Israel in the Biennale, following the exhibition of …and Europe will be stunned as the official Polish participation at the 54th Biennale in 2011. Bartana was also awarded the Rome Prize of the Villa Massimo in 2023/24, where she was in residency in 2023/24.
In 2025 Bartana will present a solo exhibition at the North Norwegian Art Center, Lofoten, Norway. In 2024 the artist held solo exhibitions in Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen and Gammel Strand, Copenhagen as well as in the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. Further recent solo exhibitions include Center for Digital Art (CDA) in Holon (2023), Philadelphia Museum of Art (2021/ 2018), Jewish Museum Berlin (2021), Fondazione Modena Arte Visive in Modena (2019), Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne (2017), Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (2014), Secession in Vienna (2012) and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark (2012).
Yael Bartana‘s works are part of various permanent collections, such as Jewish Museum, Berlin, Tate Modern, London, Jewish Museum, New York, Guggenheim, New York and Abu Dhabi, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Magasin III – Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm and The German Federal Collection of Contemporary Art.
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News
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The imagery of identity and the politics of memory are the themes which form the core of Yael Bartana‘s artistic practice. Constantly seeking to create alternative fictional realities in commentary to existing narratives, Yael Bartana stages speculative situations and introduces fictive moments and futures in her works. Though known for her films and collective performances, the artist works across many various media, including sculpture, light ojects, installation and photography.
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WorksOpen a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Installation view, The German Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Courtesy the artist and LAS Art Foundation. Ph: Andrea Rossetti
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:Installation view, The German Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Courtesy the artist and LAS Art Foundation. Ph: Andrea Rossetti
Yael Bartana
Farewell, 2024One channel video and sound installation, 15:20 minEdition of 6 + 2 APYBARTANA-.24-0018'If we understand thresholds as passages between territories, categories, and realities, then this is what my works always dealt with. Perhaps my central work in the pavilion, 'Light to the...'If we understand thresholds as passages between territories, categories, and realities, then this is what my works always dealt with. Perhaps my central work in the pavilion, 'Light to the Nations', can be understood as a means to overcome the final, earthly threshold.'
- Yael Bartana
Farewell portrays a ceremony preceding the departure of the generation ship "Light to the Nations", destined for distant galaxies. With a journey transcending the boundaries of time and space about to begin, the ceremony is designed to observe this separation from Earth.The dancers in Farewell evoke a sense of longing and anticipation as their ethereal movements navigate the liminal space between our world and the unknown. Dressed as sylphs, they allude to the spirit of Romanticism and its explorations of human transformation and the supernatural.
Bartana also draws from the Labanotation, a system developed by choreographer Rudolf von Laban in the early twentieth century. Laban’s style of expressionistic dance combined collective and ritualistic movement in a way that echoes Bartana’s own engagement with social themes. As the video unfolds, Bartana’s lens transports viewers beyond the confines of Earth to the vast expanse of space, where the generation ship, "Light to the Nations", floats in the cosmic void. The ship emerges as a messianic vessel, a promise of redemption, and the dancers mirror the kinetic movement of the ship as well as the human endeavor behind it.
Towards the ceremony’s climax, the dancers put on animal masks—a horse, a donkey, and a ram— evoking apocalyptic imagery and connecting to the Judeo-Christian messianic narrative woven throughout Bartana’s work. "Farewell’s" pre-enactment of an ecstatic dance becomes a visceral exploration of looming catastrophe and hope.
The forest setting reflects "Light to the Nations’" imperative to grant nature a chance for rejuvenation. The ceremony marks humanity’s parting from Earth and its journey toward salvation, underscoring the interconnectedness of utopia and catastrophe. Farewell envisions a departure toward realities yet unknown to humankind.Exhibitions
'Thresholds', The German Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2024ExhibitionsExternal ExhibitionsPressPublicationsVideoArtist Yael Bartana: Imagine Something Different | Louisiana Channel, 2024
Artist Talk Yael Bartana: Redemption Now | Jewish Museum Berlin, 2021