Yael Bartana was born in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel, in 1970. She currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Yael Bartana is an observer of the contemporary and a pre-enactor. She employs art as a scalpel inside the mechanisms of power structures and navigates the fine and crackled line between the sociological and the imagination. Over the past twenty years, she has dealt with some of the dark dreams of the collective unconscious and reactivated the collective imagination, dissected group identities and (an-)aesthetic means of persuasion. In her films, installations, photographs, staged performances and public monuments Yael Bartana investigates subjects like national identity, trauma, and displacement, often through ceremonies, memorials, public rituals and collective gatherings.

Her work has been exhibited worldwide, and is represented in the collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Selected solo shows include: Light to the Nations, The Center for Digital Art, Tel Aviv (2023); Yael Bartana Retrospective, Antenna Documentary Film Festival, Sydney, (2022); Malka Germania, University Art Gallery @ UCI, Irvine, USA (2022); Yael Bartana, Redemption Now, Jewish Museum Berlin, Berlin (2021); Yael Bartana. Cast Off, Fondazione Modena Arte Visive, Modena (2019); And Europe Will Be Stunned, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2018); What if Women Ruled the World, Manchester International Festival, Manchester and Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture Aarhus (2017); Trembling Times, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2017); On Cohabitation, The Banff Centre, Alberta (2016); Wenn Ihr wollt, ist es kein Traum, Secession, Vienna (2012); ...and Europe will be stunned, Moderna Museet, Malmö (2010); Trembling Time, Kings of the Hill, PS1, New York (2008).

She has also taken part in several group exhibitions, among which: Dawn of Humanity, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany (2023); I am resisting, Museumsquartier Osnabrück / Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, Osnabrück, Germany (2023); Dance Me To The End Of Love, Performing PAC, Milan, Italy (2023); Dix and the present, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (2023); #empowernment Planetarische Feminismen, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany (2022); What is the Proper Way to Display a Flag?, Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen, Germany (2022); Witch Hunt, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021); Histories of Women / Feminist Histories, MASP / Casa de Povo, Sao Paulo (2019); Reality... is more absurd than any film, Marta Herford Museum, Herford (2019); The Street. Where the World is Made, MAXXI, Rome (2018); Freedom of Movement, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2018); Scenes from the Collection, Jewish Museum New York (2018); Place Relations, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo (2017); The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetic, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2016); Summer guests, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisboa (2016); How to (...) things that don’t exist, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2015); La disparition des lucioles, La Collection Lambert, Avignon (2014); Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2013).

In 2002 she took part in the 4th Manifesta; in 2005 in the 9th Istanbul Biennial; in 2012 in the 7th Berlin Biennial; in 2014 in the 19th Biennale of Sydney and in the 31st Sao Paolo Biennial. In 2011 she represented Poland in the 54th Venice Biennale.

She won the Artes Mundi 4 Prize (2010) and the trilogy …And Europe Will Be Stunned was ranked as the 9th most important art work of the 21th century by the Guardian newspaper (2019). 

In 2023 she was awarded of the Rome Prize at German Academy in Rome Villa Massimo.