Foto Friday – A Return to Poland with Yael Bartana

April 9, 2010 - 4:32 PM by

Artist Yael Bartana investigates Israeli society and politics through photography, film, video, sound work and installations. Born in Afula and now working in Amsterdam and Tel Aviv, she has had numerous solo exhibitions in Israel and abroad, most recently at the Sommer Contemporary Art gallery in Tel Aviv.

Bartana is interested in the events that have shaped Israeli and Jewish history and identity in the 20th century, such as propaganda films, archival footage, military symbols, uniforms and ceremonies and anthems.

The current exhibition is the Israeli premiere of a video installation in which 2 films out of a yet-incomplete trilogy are presented: Nightmares (2007) and Wall & Tower (2009). In Nightmares, a young activist speaks to an empty stadium and encourages 3 million Jews to return to Poland.

Fictional though it may be, the idea of such encouragement (the word “Jew” in the mouths of Poles is presented here as positive, not negative) and the enthusiastic pioneering response (so evocative of youth movements, the early kibbutz and other images that nourished our idealism over the past century) is disturbing. Which it is supposed to be. Particularly given the exhibit’s timing, with Holocaust Remembrance Day coming up on Sunday and Israel Independence Day the week after.

“Wall and Tower” continues the hypothetical notion of a Jewish return to Poland. In this film, the Jews return to build the first kibbutz in Europe using the overnight jerry-built “wall and tower” tactic employed by pre-State Jewish pioneers under the British Mandate. The location of this fantasy settlement is also significant: it was filmed in Warsaw on the site where the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will stand.

According to the Polish Cultural Institute, “The artist fantasizes about a vigorous new movement… the Movement for Jewish Rebirth in Poland. Its distinct logo, a white eagle on a Star of David…

“Bartana recalls the Zionist dream, invoking heroic images… [and] moves within an ambiguous area marked by the specters of nationalism and military determination, touching upon the memory of anti-Semitism and extermination which accompanied the history of settlement.”

All of which, it should be added, led to the eventual founding of the State of Israel as a national Jewish homeland following the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews — including 3 million Jews of Polish extraction — were murdered.

Yael Bartana’s show runs through May 15 at Sommer Contemporary Art, 13 Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv. More works can be viewed at the gallery website and the artist’s website.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , • Category: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Pop Culture 

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One Comment on Foto Friday – A Return to Poland with Yael Bartana

  1. Nostalgia Sunday – KH-UIA Poster Exhibit | ISRAELITY on Sun, Nov 7th 2010 5:30 PM

    2. [...] years, from the Soviet Realism of Otte Wallish portraying the Jewish laborer sowing seeds with a “Wall and Tower” in the background. Or the Jewish working man with his hammer (by an unknown artist) to the 1980s [...]

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