Yael Bartana

Yael Bartana takes the position of a critical observer of her native Israel. In complex visualizations that span video, photography, and installation, she often appropriates and manipulates raw documentary materials, preserving modern-day Israeli rituals as if they were the sacred ceremonies of a primordial society. Bartana combines past and present in unexpected ways: she represented Poland at the 2011 Venice Biennale with an installation of three films that followed a current organized movement to repopulate Poland with Jews. The discourse that arises is essentially a retelling of the 20th-century Zionist narrative.