A renewed opportunity arose to see Israeli artist Yael Bartana's three fascinating, provocative, and visually stunning films. The Louisiana Museum had co-produced the films and subsequently acquired the complete trilogy for its Collection.
With these three films, originally shown at Louisiana in the spring of 2012 and now part of the Collection, Yael Bartana staged a grand vision: the immigration of three million Jews into Poland. The artist (born 1970) described a movement with a charismatic leader, a Jewish settlement in Poland, and finally the funeral of the leader and the consolidation of the movement.
The works confronted some of the most traumatic phenomena of the 20th century: ethnic cleansing, rabid nationalism, ideological insanity, and the carefully orchestrated narrow-mindedness of collectivism—all conveyed in a filmic idiom whose visual rhetoric was partly drawn from the propaganda of Communism and Nazism.
YAEL BARTANA ON THE GHOSTS OF HISTORY
In this conversation with Louisiana Channel, the artist Yael Bartana spoke about her Polish trilogy. "The sense of community is so strong that people will die for their nation," the artist said, stating that it was only when stepping outside the system that one could realize the manipulation one had been through.
