In the spring of 2021, the Jewish Museum Berlin will be showing an expansive presentation of works by the video artist Yael Bartana. Bartana explores the visual languages of identity and commemorative politics. Her artistic motifs include public rituals, ceremonies, and social practices intended to strengthen collective identities. A frequent point of reference is the national consciousness of Israel, her birthplace. The blurred lines between reality and fiction and questions of “what if” are recurring themes across her oeuvre.
Alongside some of her early and more recent work, the exhibition will introduce the new video installation Malka Germania that Bartana has conceived exclusively for the show and produced in Berlin. The piece challenges political expectations of salvation or collective redemption. Once again, Bartana will artistically enact alternative realities that offer viewers new perspectives. Bartana draws on the German-Jewish experience, past and present, and unearths scenes from the collective unconscious.
Between 2006 and 2011, Yael Bartana worked in Poland, where she produced the trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, which is about an imaginary movement of Jews returning to Poland, inspired by the Zionist project. The trilogy was Poland’s contribution to the 2011 Venice Biennale; The Guardian recently ranked it ninth on the UK newspaper’s list of the best art of the twenty-first century.
Curators: Shelley Harten and Gregor H. Lersch
The Malka Germania video installation was created as a special commission and made possible by the Friends of the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Exhibition Information at a Glance
- When
Spring 2021
- Entry fee
with the museum ticket
- Where
Old Building, level 1
Lindenstraße 9–14, 10969 Berlin
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Yael Bartana
Dateline: Israel
Exhibition website with contemporary photography and video art, including Yael Bartana’s video installation Trembling Time (2001)
Online Project
2007/08
Welcome to Jerusalem
As part of the exhibition, Yael Bartana's ‘historic pre-enactment’ Inferno (2013) was temporarily on display.
Exhibition
11 Dec 2017 to 1 May 2019
Our Exhibitions
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At a Glance...