Yael’s practice spans the fields of video art, 3D animations, ceramic 3D printing, glass and wood, along with paper works, bridging physical objects and virtual modeling, archaeology and digital technology. Her work is concerned with the human condition under threat and fragmentation, displacement and forced migration, as well as otherness in the 21st century. Her visual world draws from archaeological findings, mythologies and archetypes, alongside an extroverted and bizarre aesthetic, portraying the tension between ancient and contemporary narratives in a context of time and identity.
In her video art works, she addresses the exploitation of a migrant laborer and the fate of a refugee via an avatar in the virtual world. The “ideal” alpha-male avatar, her main protagonist, undergoes transformation, becoming exhausted, ridiculed and aged - an ironic thought given that, after all, in his “real” life in the virtual world, an avatar never ages - evoking issues of the limits of power and stereotypical identity.
Toren did her Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors at Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem and studied theatrical theory and stage design at Tel Aviv University. Her MFA project at the University of Haifa was awarded first prize. Toren has received the Sandberg Award, the Phelheim Award, and the Sharett Fund Award. Yael Toren has created a diverse body of animations and video works, including Pietà and Dis-tense/Terracotta, 3D animations featured in her solo exhibition Deadlines, curated by Prof. Leonida Kovač at Kranjčar Gallery in Zagreb, 2023. A year later Pietà and Dis-tense/Terracotta were exhibited at the Jewish Museum of Venice curated by Avi Ifergan, Director and Chief Curator of Contemporary Art at the Bar-David Museum of Art and Judaica. Dis-tense/Terracotta, was presented at the Umm al-Fahm Gallery in 2019, a gallery known for its political agenda of giving a platform to Arab and Jewish artists. In 2017 Pietà was exhibited at the APS Mdina Cathedral at the Contemporary Art Biennale in Malta, curated by Dr. Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci and in 2015 it was shown at the 5th Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art, curated by Prof. Mikhail Rashkovetsky. In 2016, at Ikona Gallery, Pietà was shown alongside The And, a series of 3D animations presented as part of the events commemorating 500 years of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice.
Toren has also done a number of video artworks, including a 2012 animation for Gefunden, a composition by Amos Elkana, winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Music Composition, based on a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, performed at the Hazira Jerusalem Festival. Her 2008 video for Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio was directed by Deddi Baron at the Kiel Opera House in Germany. In 2007, she collaborated with art technologist Yair Reshef on an interactive video for a Beethoven concert conducted by Yaron Gottfried, performed at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Her 2006 cooperation with composer Amos Elkana at contemporary music concerts and sessions includes an animation piece dedicated to György Kurtág’s 80th birthday event at Schinkel-Kirche, Neuhardenberg, Berlin. In 2005 Toren made a series of video compositions for works by Toru Takemitsu, Beethoven and Yaron Gottfried, a concert series conducted by Yaron Gottfried, presented at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and throughout Israel.
Leonida Kovač
Art historian and theorist,
curator and full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb.