Yael Bartana | Rehearsal for Redemption | 03.02.2023 – 22.04.2023

Artistic advice: Shelley Harten

With Rehearsal for Redemption, the internationally acclaimed artist Yael Bartana enters into a conversation with the location of the exhibition – the Wannsee in Berlin – as a venue of historic (pre-)enactment. Yael Bartana continues her longstanding inquiry into the human capacity for hope – a prophetic emotion based on past experiences and a prime motor of the political imagination.

The capsule project, created especially for Wannsee Contemporary, shows a video work, photos, and collages produced in the area. It is based on Bartana’s interest in the 1920s as a time of intense political, ideological, and social upheavals alive with utopian vision and dystopian promise. The artist takes inspiration from the Laban Choreographic Institute that opened in 1927 in the neighboring Grunewald area. The Hungarian choreographer Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958) developed a kinetographic style of expressionistic dance. Following the principles of the “Lebensreform” (life-reform movement), the so-called “Labanotation” combined principles of physical, social, and ritualistic movement – central aspects in Bartana’s oeuvre.

With support / Gefördert durch ein NEUSTART plus-Stipendium der Stiftung Kunstfonds /NEUSTART KULTUR der BKM“.

Link to Boris Buchholz feature on the exhibition in Tagesspiegel: https://wannsee-contemporary.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Marchenhafte-Bilder-Sind-das-Feen-und-Elfen-am-Berliner-Wannsee-.pdf

And read Laura Storfner’s review in CeeCee: https://ceecee.cc/en/category/culture/

Credit: Yael Bartana and Wannsee Contemporary, Berlin. Photographer: Jens Ziehe.