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:
'Summer of the Arts!‘, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 2024 / 2025 - with Max Ernst 'La Parisienne'
Yael Bartana
Zukunftsbewältigung / Overcoming the Future (1), 2023One channel video and sound installation, 6:20 min, loopEdition of 5 + 2 APYBARTANA-.23-0001In her work 'Overcoming the Future' Yael Bartana continues her longstanding inquiry into the human capacity for hope –a prophetic emotion based on past experiences and a prime motor of...In her work "Overcoming the Future" Yael Bartana continues her longstanding inquiry into the human capacity for hope –a prophetic emotion based on past experiences and a prime motor of the political imagination. It is based on Bartana’s interest in the 1920s as a time of intense political, ideological, and social upheavals alive with utopian vision and dystopian promise. The artist takes inspiration from the Laban Choreographic Institute that opened in 1927 in the neighboring Grunewald area. The Hungarian choreographer Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958) developed a kinetographic style of expressionistic dance. Following the principles of the “Lebensreform” (life-reform movement), the so-called “Labanotation” combined principles of physical, social, and ritualistic movement –central aspects in Bartana’s oeuvre.Exhibitions
'Summer of the Arts!‘, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 2024 / 2025
'Yael Bartana. Utopia Now!‘, Weserburg Museum, Bremen, on view until 24 November 2024
'Yael Bartana: Things to Come', Gammel Strand, Copenhagen, 2024
'Yael Bartana: Rehearsal for Redemption', Wannsee Contemporary, Berlin in 2023
ExhibitionsExternal ExhibitionsPressPublicationsVideoArtist Yael Bartana: Imagine Something Different | Louisiana Channel, 2024
Artist Talk Yael Bartana: Redemption Now | Jewish Museum Berlin, 2021