Yael Bartana b. 1970

Yael 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. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, and is represented in the collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam.

Selection of solo exhibitions includes University Art Gallery, University of California, Irvine (2022), 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 of Modern Art, Humlebæk, DK (2012), 54th Venice Biennal, Polish Pavilion (2011), Moderna Museet, Malmö (2010), MoMA PS1, NY (2008). 

Selection of group exhibitions includes Moderna Museet Malmö (2022/23), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021/2022), KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2020), Sao Paulo Biennial (2014, 2010, 2006), Berlin Biennial (2012), 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 artwork of the 21st century by the Guardian newspaper (2019).