Yael Bartana’s films, film installations and photographs, challenge the national consciousness that is propagated by her native country Israel. Questions of “Homeland,” “Return” and “Belonging” are the central questions she explores. Bartana’s platforms of investigation are ceremonies, public rituals and social diversions that are intended to reaffirm the collective identity of countries.
Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) (2007) and Mur i Wieza (Wall and Tower) (2009) are the first episodes of the “Polish Trilogy.” Adopting the structure and sensibility of the propaganda films of the 1930s, these videos investigate the complex historical and political relations among Jews, Poles, and other Europeans in the era of globalization.
In Mary Koszmary, left-wing publicist Slawomir Sierakowski strides into a huge, empty stadium in Warsaw to the sounds of the Polish national anthem. In a breathtaking speech, he asks three million Jews to return to their homeland to help the Poles deal with their nightmares.
The second part of the trilogy, Mur i Wieza, is an answer to Sierakowski’s provocation. A group of young people dressed in costumes, mocking the 1930s East European pioneer Jews, are returning to Warsaw to construct a Wall and Tower settlement reminiscent of the Wall and Tower settlements built in the 1930s in the Palestinian territory. They erect the settlement in the place where the Warsaw Ghetto was located during World War II, beside the Heroes of the Ghetto monument. While Sierakowski watches, these young people, after finishing the construction, raise a blood-red flag bearing a symbol that combines the Star of David and the Polish eagle on the observatory tower in the middle of the settlement. The symbol is of the fictional Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, founded by the artist. Through heroic images and the sounds of young men building a new country, Bartana’s film mirrors and displays the Zionist dream.
