Yael Bartana (b.1970) 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. In her films, installations, photographs, staged performances, and public monuments she investigates subjects like national identity, trauma, and displacement, often through ceremonies, memorials, public rituals, and collective gatherings.
Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including (solo exhibitions) GL Strand Copenhagen (2024); Jewish Museum Berlin (2021), Fondazione Modena Arti Visive (2019/2020); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2018); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015); Secession, Vienna (2012); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2012); Louisiana museum (2012) Moderna Museet, Malmö (2010); MoMA PS1, NY (2008)
(Group exhibitions) Venice Biennial / German Pavilion (2024), São Paulo Biennial (2014, 2010, 2006); Berlin Biennial (2012); Venice Biennial / Polish Pavilion (2011) Documenta 12 (2007); Istanbul Biennial (2005), Manifesta 4 (2002).
She won the Artes Mundi 4 Prize (2010) and the trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned was ranked as the 9th most important art work of the 21th century by the Guardian newspaper (2019).
She is represented in the collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris. Stedelijk museum, Amsterdam.
Yael Bartana was awarded the Rome Prize of Villa Massimo 2023/24 and is in residency there until the end of June 2024. Furthermore, she lives in Berlin and Amsterdam.
