Art and designיעל ברתנא

Yael Bartana

Yael Bartana is an Israeli artist, filmmaker and photographer known for the film trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, shown in the Polish pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennale.

born 1970And Europe Will Be Stunned trilogyRepresenting Poland at Venice BiennaleVideo art on national identity

Born: 22 December 1970, Kfar Yehezkel
Occupation: artist, photographer, video artist, television producer
Education: Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten
Founded: Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (2012)

Yael Bartana was born in 1970 in Kfar Yehezkel

Yael Bartana was born on December 22, 1970, and grew up in Kfar Yehezkel. Her father was a veterinarian and her mother a teacher. She is the granddaughter of the educator Avraham Bartana.

After her army service she traveled in Africa for 8 months. From 1992 to 1996 she studied photography at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and her final project won a prize of excellence. She then earned a master's degree in art at the School of Visual Arts in New York, worked in film in Toronto, and continued her studies at the Royal Academy in Amsterdam.

Her work uses film, photography, video, sound and installation, and often deals with national identity, Israeli society and the Jewish past in Europe. In 2007 she showed Summer Camp at Documenta 12 in Kassel. Between 2006 and 2011 she worked in Poland on the trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, about Polish-Jewish relations.

In 2011 the trilogy represented Poland at the 54th Venice Biennale, and she was the first non-Polish citizen to represent the country. In 2024 her work was shown in the German pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. She lives and works in Amsterdam, Berlin and Tel Aviv.