Yael Bartana, born in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel, lives in Amsterdam and Berlin. In her films, she merges political and social observations with the staging of fascistic authority. Recent solo shows at the Fondazione Modena Arte Visive, Modena, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2019), Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2018), Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Volksbühne, Berlin (2017), among others. Participation in the Faena Festival, Miami (2019), IDFA, Amsterdam, Berlinale Forum Expanded (2016), 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and documenta 12 (2007).
Selected films: Simone the Hermetic, Pardes (2015), Tr u e Finn (2014), Inferno (2013, KDK 2015), JRMiP Congress (2012) and And Europe Will Be Stunned: Zamach (2011, KDK 2013).
Website Yael Bartana
KINO DER KUNST 2020
The Undertaker
ISR/DEU 2019, 2K, 13’ OHNE DIALOG/NO DIALOGUE
A funeral procession led by an austere high priestess makes its way through an American downtown en route to a cemetery where the weapons carried by her followers will be ceremoniously buried. As the high priestess fills dirt into the grave and stamps down the soil, her disciples carry out a performance based on a choreography by Israeli dancer Noa Eshkol. Militarism is subtly transformed into an aesthetic plea for pacificism in which the beauty of composed movement is celebrated.
Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
KINO DER KUNST 2013
Assassination / Zamach
(POL/ISR/NLD 2011, Blueray, 35 Min., plOmeU)
German Premiere
In the near future we attend the funeral of the leader of the Jewish Renaissance Movement, who has been killed by an anonymous assassin. This symbolic death creates the myth of a new political movement ready to be implemented. Zamach is the last part of a trilogy and brings the dream about a multinational community and the brand-new Polish society to an ultimate test.
Inferno
(BRA 2013, 22’, no dialog)
With dynamic imagery influenced by Hollywood action movies and the silent-film aesthetics of Expressionism, the artist weaves a story about the construction of a replica of Salomon’s Jerusalem Temple by a powerful Brazilian sect. An ancient episode from the Middle East, the inspiration of the Jewish diaspora, is set in relationship to religious fanaticism in South America today. Fact and fiction, prophecy and history – is the reconstruction of Salomon’s Temple the anticipation of its demise?
