Yael Bartana is a filmmaker, photographer and installation artist whose work centers on the imagery of identity and the politics of memory, focused largely on the ceremonies, public rituals, and social diversions of her native Israel. In 2018, with support from a Center Project grant, the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited And Europe Will Be Stunned—a film trilogy addressing the history of Polish-Jewish relations and its influence on the contemporary Polish identity. The Museum also commissioned a new public performance, Bury Our Weapons, Not Our Bodies!, which included a staged procession and a series of eulogies about war and survival.
Bartana is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Dorothea von Stetten Kunstpreis from the Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2004 and the Artes Mundi Prize from the National Museum Cardiff in Wales in 2010. 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.
