VIDEO: Yael Bartana-Imagine Something Different

“I want to think of myself as a quantum. I want to be in two places at the same time. I want to be the outside and the inside”. Israeli artist Yael Bartana speaks about her work, about always being categorised as a Jew and outsider, and about her insistence that art can change the world for the better. “I do feel there is something else within me. A place between home and exile. I want to get rid of these two binaries.”

Reflecting upon the events of October 7th, Yael Bartana insists on a discussion beyond black or white, good or bad. “I needed to be silent, and I needed to mourn like many other people. What happened is definitely beyond, beyond what humanity can perceive. Of course, what Israel is doing right now, I cannot support it. I understand the need for safety, but this war is beyond. That’s not going to bring any safety to anyone.”

“The only way is to understand that there is another narrative, another story on the other side and be aware of it. As an artist, I choose always to speak from my perspective, and I would never speak from the perspective of a Palestinian because I’m not. I cannot speak in the name of others, but I know that there is the other. And that’s what I’m trying to do. Maybe if I cannot change reality, I can participate in the act of imagination, in the act of imagining something different.”

Yael Bartana (b. 1970 in Israel) 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; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk. She currently lives and works in Berlin, Rome and Amsterdam. Together with Ersan Mondtag, she will be representing Germany at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Selection of Solo Exhibitions: GL Strand (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); Moderna Museet, Malmö (2010); MoMA PS1, NY (2008). Selection of Group Exhibitions: São 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).

 

Yael Bartana was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in December 2023. The interview took place at Gammel Strand, Copenhagen. Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan, Editing: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan, Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner, © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024. Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling