Yael Bartana was born in 1970, in Israel and currently lives and works from Berlin. She received a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and participated in Rijks akademie van Beelden de Kunsten in Amsterdam. She works primarily with video and has focused on Israel and the Israeli situation in her works. The point of departure for her video films is everyday living and its rituals related to the actions of the state and the constant presence of war and insecurity. Bartana’s films are often centered on a personal poetic expression, achieved through the manipulation of sound, movement and images. They are both visually and intellectually intriguing, sparking responses from the political to questions of machismo, gender and human relationships.

Bartana has had solo exhibitions at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Modern Art in Oxford, B’roFriedrich in Berlin, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, and many other venues. Her work has also been exhibited in such venues as the Tate Modern, De Appel Foundation, the 2004 Liverpool Biennial, Kunstwerke-Berlin, the 2002 Manifesta 4 European Biennial, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center. She has also participated in numerous film/video festivals, including RoerdamFilmFestival (2002, 2004), Viper Basel - International festival for film video and new media 2002, and Transmediale 2003, an international media art festival in Berlin.