Yael Bartana

In our project space we show photographs by Yael Bartana (1970 Kfar-Yehezkel, IL). Known for her videos as Trembling Time and Kings of the Hill in which she respectively looks at commemorative and social rituals in Israel, Bartana originally started art school studying photography. She kept on photographing besides her filming, carrying a camera with her at all times. This is the first extensive presentation of her photographs.

In Bartana's photographs, mostly shot in Israel, you can sense the same underlying threat as in her videos. There is a military shooting puppet standing solitary in a dry landscape; a young boy intensely looking at the spectator; two boys during Purim dressed up as a soldier and police man (complete with moustache). Bartana sees herself as an amateur-anthropologist observing her social surrounding. Her documents of local situations indicate their universal implications. The pictures become allegories open to the viewer's own interpretation.