I'm a visual culture and art historian researcher. My work focus on intersections between gender, identity and memory, especially on its manifestations in the public space. I'm the head of the multidisciplinary program in humanities and arts in Oranim College and the founder of ABR and A/R/Tographic studies at the college .
The article was published for the group exhibition "Hameholel- Wake" Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv ... more The article was published for the group exhibition "Hameholel- Wake" Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv 2024. Curator: Margalit Frydman Artists: Lucy Elkivity, Alejandra Okret, Lili Liliana Fisher, Doron Adar, Hannan Abu- hussein.
In Between-Nirvana Assadi Dabbah, UmmELfahem Gallery, 2023
The paper was published for the first solo exhibition of Nirvana Assadi Dabbah at UmmELfahem Gal... more The paper was published for the first solo exhibition of Nirvana Assadi Dabbah at UmmELfahem Gallery.
Curator: Yael Guilat
Production: Netali Breuer
Designer: Ashraf Fawakhry
Photo: Yigal Pardo
English Traduction: Rachel Kessel, Arabic Translation: Nawaf Atamnah
The text is presented here in English, Hebrew and Arabic
Yael Guilat &Shosi Waksman, "The Linguistic Landscape of Israel's Military Cemeteries as a field of Symbolic Contestation" in Amei Koll-Stobbe& Sebastian Knospe (eds.) Language Contact in Times of Globalization ,Peter Lang Publication and Greifswald University, 2012
The chapter focuses on the changing semiotic landscape of Military cemeteries (MC) in Israel as a... more The chapter focuses on the changing semiotic landscape of Military cemeteries (MC) in Israel as a text embedded in a specific social-political context. The data consists of a two-year visual documentation of military cemeteries in various places in Israel and interviews with relevant role holders and observations on daily-life practices in the cemeteries. Based on a mixed methodological approach, we concluded that the early uniformity which characterized MCs until the last decades is giving way to a more heterogeneous linguistic landscape. This heterogeneity is embodied in all aspects related to scripts and multimodal resources. The MCs are overflowing with scripts, languages, genres, writing platforms, artifacts, and landscaping styles that change the spatial design. Those changes were interpreted as a shift from a production of a collective national place of commemoration towards a production of a personal collected memories space, a process which is embodied in a dynamic multimodal linguistic landscape that blends various languages and discourses.
This article deals with the intersection between bereavement, gender, and art in the context of t... more This article deals with the intersection between bereavement, gender, and art in the context of the cult of the fallen in Israel, focusing on the life story and artwork of two women artists, Asnat Austerlitz (b. 1969) and Michal Shachnai Yaakobi (b. 1967) who experienced orphanhood in a military context. Adopting the two-track model of bereavement suggested by Simon Rubin in 1981, the article offers an analytical, interdisciplinary examination of their artworks as adult women artists who are aware of the fragility of life and its finite character but also understand the importance and significance of continuing emotional bonds after death. Both have developed in diverse medium gender-based artistic creations related to the cult of the fallen creating models of alternative and counter-hegemonic memory that are manifested through personal languages full of irony, fantasy, and pain.
Body, Ethnicity, and Gender in Video Art Works of Three Mizrahi-Masorti Women Artists in Post-Secular Israel", 2021
ABSTRACT:
Amid the social and political changes that Israel has seen in recent decades, gender a... more ABSTRACT: Amid the social and political changes that Israel has seen in recent decades, gender and ethnicity and their place in Jewish rituals are finding more and more representation in art discourse and visual culture. Life in a Jewish and democratic state, as Israel defines itself, lays questions of halakha (codified religious law) at the doorsteps of Jewish women, religious or not. Thus, halakhic issues appear in the current works of Orthodox women artists, joining those artists who define themselves as Masorti (traditionalist) and others who do not lead religious lives but tackle post-secular challenges as secular believers or are just non-observant. Discussed below are video art works by several Jewish-Israeli women artists, focusing on those who identify as Mizrahi-Masorti and use gendered lenses to investigate the Israeli post-secular discourse on halakhic texts and practices from intersectional perspectives on body, ethnicity, and gender. Their critical view transcends the trite binary demarcation of Israel’s religious and secular realms. Their video art works, I argue, express a demand for dual recognition of their reference to Jewish law: by Israel’s hegemonic society and by its art discourse. Through them, these artists define and redefine their female Mizrahi-Masorti identity as a continuous performance of the self. Available through Project Muse
"Re-Reading Women Artists and Feminist Discourse in 1980s Israeli Art." Israel Studies, vol. 28 no. 1, 2023, p. 162-182., 2023
The article proposes a gender-based re-reading, re-appreciation, and re-contextualization of the ... more The article proposes a gender-based re-reading, re-appreciation, and re-contextualization of the endeavors and works of several Israeli women artists in the 1980s. Adopting a mixed method (visual, gender, and critical research) and based on archival data and current interviews, it sheds light on silenced aspects in the works of women artists but also expands on the way aesthetics and politics in the field of art are understood within the dominant symbolic order.
The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation ... more The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation in Granada, Spain, during the trasition to Democracy. A historical reconstruction of urban naming practiques underpins the interconections between discourses, ideologies, practices and policies that shaped the post-dictatorial space in Granada.
ABSTRACT:How do representations of living rooms, domestic artifacts, and family gaze articulate &... more ABSTRACT:How do representations of living rooms, domestic artifacts, and family gaze articulate "local home images" in contemporary Israeli art? The article examines comparatively the way artists from different ethnic backgrounds assume the "inside agent" role toward their own cultural identity or the "outside agent" role in the home of the "Other". Both inside and outside have adopted ethnographic or pseudo-ethnographic strategies in the wake of the "ethnographic turn" of contemporary art and visual culture. These comparative perspectives do not converge into one new type of Israeliness. Images of various and different domestic environments offer a conflicted view of what "feeling at home" means, questioning the role of one who produces the "family gaze", the homely image itself, and where and to whom these images are exhibited.
ABSTRACT This article offers an interpretive reading of current works of art by women that indica... more ABSTRACT This article offers an interpretive reading of current works of art by women that indicate the paradoxical place of the woman artist as a mother in the cycle of militarism and attitudes toward the discourse of bereavement and commemoration. My hypothesis is that the arts herald or anticipate the trauma by seeking to express something that may be called “pre- and counter-commemoration.” This interpretation of these artists' stance expands on insights arising from the notion of “counter-memory” to discuss a paradoxical form of commemoration that refuses to acquiesce in the cycle of militarism and memorialization. The article offers an integrated examination of theory and practices in the historical context of motherhood and nationalism and, specifically, of women artists in Israel in recent decades in the “discourse of bereavement” as opposed to the “discourse of the bereaved.”
In its Historical Memory Law (October 2007), Spain recognized victims on both sides of its 1936–1... more In its Historical Memory Law (October 2007), Spain recognized victims on both sides of its 1936–1939 Civil War and established entitlements for victims and descendants of victims of the war and the Franco regime that followed (1939–1975). The law requires authorities to remove Francoist symbols and signs from public buildings and spaces, rename streets and squares, and cleanse the public space of monuments and artifacts that glorify or commemorate the regime. By allowing exceptions on artistic, architectural, or religious grounds, however, the law triggered persistent public struggles over monuments, memorials, and outdoor sculptures. This article examines the implementation of the law in the city of Granada, via a case study relating to the removal of a sculpture honoring the founder of the Spanish Fascist movement, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The controversy over the statue sparked a debate in Granada about the implementation of the law in the public space and raised questions a...
The Israeli art field has been negotiating with the definition of Israeli-ness since its beginnin... more The Israeli art field has been negotiating with the definition of Israeli-ness since its beginnings and more even today, as “transnationalism” has become not only a lived daily experience among migrants or an ideological approach toward identity but also a challenge to the Zionist-Hebrew identity that is imposed on “repatriated” Jews. Young artists who reached Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) as children in the 1990s not only retained their mother tongue but also developed a hyphenated first-generation immigrant identity and a transnational state of mind that have found artistic expression in projects and exhibitions in recent years, such as Odessa–Tel Aviv (2017), Dreamland Never Found (2017), Pravda (2018), and others. Nicolas Bourriaud’s botanical metaphor of the radicant, which insinuates successive or even “simultaneous en-rooting”, seems to be close to the 1.5-generation experience. Following the transnational perspective and the intersectional approach (the “inter” b...
Malinovski, D and Tuti, S. (ed.) Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes. Questioning, boundaries and openiing spaces., 2020
The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation ... more The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation in Granada, Spain, during the trasition to Democracy. A historical reconstruction of urban naming practiques underpins the interconections between discourses, ideologies, practices and policies that shaped the post-dictatorial space in Granada.
The article was published for the group exhibition "Hameholel- Wake" Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv ... more The article was published for the group exhibition "Hameholel- Wake" Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv 2024. Curator: Margalit Frydman Artists: Lucy Elkivity, Alejandra Okret, Lili Liliana Fisher, Doron Adar, Hannan Abu- hussein.
In Between-Nirvana Assadi Dabbah, UmmELfahem Gallery, 2023
The paper was published for the first solo exhibition of Nirvana Assadi Dabbah at UmmELfahem Gal... more The paper was published for the first solo exhibition of Nirvana Assadi Dabbah at UmmELfahem Gallery.
Curator: Yael Guilat
Production: Netali Breuer
Designer: Ashraf Fawakhry
Photo: Yigal Pardo
English Traduction: Rachel Kessel, Arabic Translation: Nawaf Atamnah
The text is presented here in English, Hebrew and Arabic
Yael Guilat &Shosi Waksman, "The Linguistic Landscape of Israel's Military Cemeteries as a field of Symbolic Contestation" in Amei Koll-Stobbe& Sebastian Knospe (eds.) Language Contact in Times of Globalization ,Peter Lang Publication and Greifswald University, 2012
The chapter focuses on the changing semiotic landscape of Military cemeteries (MC) in Israel as a... more The chapter focuses on the changing semiotic landscape of Military cemeteries (MC) in Israel as a text embedded in a specific social-political context. The data consists of a two-year visual documentation of military cemeteries in various places in Israel and interviews with relevant role holders and observations on daily-life practices in the cemeteries. Based on a mixed methodological approach, we concluded that the early uniformity which characterized MCs until the last decades is giving way to a more heterogeneous linguistic landscape. This heterogeneity is embodied in all aspects related to scripts and multimodal resources. The MCs are overflowing with scripts, languages, genres, writing platforms, artifacts, and landscaping styles that change the spatial design. Those changes were interpreted as a shift from a production of a collective national place of commemoration towards a production of a personal collected memories space, a process which is embodied in a dynamic multimodal linguistic landscape that blends various languages and discourses.
This article deals with the intersection between bereavement, gender, and art in the context of t... more This article deals with the intersection between bereavement, gender, and art in the context of the cult of the fallen in Israel, focusing on the life story and artwork of two women artists, Asnat Austerlitz (b. 1969) and Michal Shachnai Yaakobi (b. 1967) who experienced orphanhood in a military context. Adopting the two-track model of bereavement suggested by Simon Rubin in 1981, the article offers an analytical, interdisciplinary examination of their artworks as adult women artists who are aware of the fragility of life and its finite character but also understand the importance and significance of continuing emotional bonds after death. Both have developed in diverse medium gender-based artistic creations related to the cult of the fallen creating models of alternative and counter-hegemonic memory that are manifested through personal languages full of irony, fantasy, and pain.
Body, Ethnicity, and Gender in Video Art Works of Three Mizrahi-Masorti Women Artists in Post-Secular Israel", 2021
ABSTRACT:
Amid the social and political changes that Israel has seen in recent decades, gender a... more ABSTRACT: Amid the social and political changes that Israel has seen in recent decades, gender and ethnicity and their place in Jewish rituals are finding more and more representation in art discourse and visual culture. Life in a Jewish and democratic state, as Israel defines itself, lays questions of halakha (codified religious law) at the doorsteps of Jewish women, religious or not. Thus, halakhic issues appear in the current works of Orthodox women artists, joining those artists who define themselves as Masorti (traditionalist) and others who do not lead religious lives but tackle post-secular challenges as secular believers or are just non-observant. Discussed below are video art works by several Jewish-Israeli women artists, focusing on those who identify as Mizrahi-Masorti and use gendered lenses to investigate the Israeli post-secular discourse on halakhic texts and practices from intersectional perspectives on body, ethnicity, and gender. Their critical view transcends the trite binary demarcation of Israel’s religious and secular realms. Their video art works, I argue, express a demand for dual recognition of their reference to Jewish law: by Israel’s hegemonic society and by its art discourse. Through them, these artists define and redefine their female Mizrahi-Masorti identity as a continuous performance of the self. Available through Project Muse
"Re-Reading Women Artists and Feminist Discourse in 1980s Israeli Art." Israel Studies, vol. 28 no. 1, 2023, p. 162-182., 2023
The article proposes a gender-based re-reading, re-appreciation, and re-contextualization of the ... more The article proposes a gender-based re-reading, re-appreciation, and re-contextualization of the endeavors and works of several Israeli women artists in the 1980s. Adopting a mixed method (visual, gender, and critical research) and based on archival data and current interviews, it sheds light on silenced aspects in the works of women artists but also expands on the way aesthetics and politics in the field of art are understood within the dominant symbolic order.
The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation ... more The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation in Granada, Spain, during the trasition to Democracy. A historical reconstruction of urban naming practiques underpins the interconections between discourses, ideologies, practices and policies that shaped the post-dictatorial space in Granada.
ABSTRACT:How do representations of living rooms, domestic artifacts, and family gaze articulate &... more ABSTRACT:How do representations of living rooms, domestic artifacts, and family gaze articulate "local home images" in contemporary Israeli art? The article examines comparatively the way artists from different ethnic backgrounds assume the "inside agent" role toward their own cultural identity or the "outside agent" role in the home of the "Other". Both inside and outside have adopted ethnographic or pseudo-ethnographic strategies in the wake of the "ethnographic turn" of contemporary art and visual culture. These comparative perspectives do not converge into one new type of Israeliness. Images of various and different domestic environments offer a conflicted view of what "feeling at home" means, questioning the role of one who produces the "family gaze", the homely image itself, and where and to whom these images are exhibited.
ABSTRACT This article offers an interpretive reading of current works of art by women that indica... more ABSTRACT This article offers an interpretive reading of current works of art by women that indicate the paradoxical place of the woman artist as a mother in the cycle of militarism and attitudes toward the discourse of bereavement and commemoration. My hypothesis is that the arts herald or anticipate the trauma by seeking to express something that may be called “pre- and counter-commemoration.” This interpretation of these artists' stance expands on insights arising from the notion of “counter-memory” to discuss a paradoxical form of commemoration that refuses to acquiesce in the cycle of militarism and memorialization. The article offers an integrated examination of theory and practices in the historical context of motherhood and nationalism and, specifically, of women artists in Israel in recent decades in the “discourse of bereavement” as opposed to the “discourse of the bereaved.”
In its Historical Memory Law (October 2007), Spain recognized victims on both sides of its 1936–1... more In its Historical Memory Law (October 2007), Spain recognized victims on both sides of its 1936–1939 Civil War and established entitlements for victims and descendants of victims of the war and the Franco regime that followed (1939–1975). The law requires authorities to remove Francoist symbols and signs from public buildings and spaces, rename streets and squares, and cleanse the public space of monuments and artifacts that glorify or commemorate the regime. By allowing exceptions on artistic, architectural, or religious grounds, however, the law triggered persistent public struggles over monuments, memorials, and outdoor sculptures. This article examines the implementation of the law in the city of Granada, via a case study relating to the removal of a sculpture honoring the founder of the Spanish Fascist movement, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The controversy over the statue sparked a debate in Granada about the implementation of the law in the public space and raised questions a...
The Israeli art field has been negotiating with the definition of Israeli-ness since its beginnin... more The Israeli art field has been negotiating with the definition of Israeli-ness since its beginnings and more even today, as “transnationalism” has become not only a lived daily experience among migrants or an ideological approach toward identity but also a challenge to the Zionist-Hebrew identity that is imposed on “repatriated” Jews. Young artists who reached Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) as children in the 1990s not only retained their mother tongue but also developed a hyphenated first-generation immigrant identity and a transnational state of mind that have found artistic expression in projects and exhibitions in recent years, such as Odessa–Tel Aviv (2017), Dreamland Never Found (2017), Pravda (2018), and others. Nicolas Bourriaud’s botanical metaphor of the radicant, which insinuates successive or even “simultaneous en-rooting”, seems to be close to the 1.5-generation experience. Following the transnational perspective and the intersectional approach (the “inter” b...
Malinovski, D and Tuti, S. (ed.) Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes. Questioning, boundaries and openiing spaces., 2020
The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation ... more The auhors propose a multilayered (archeological) investigation of street-signage transformation in Granada, Spain, during the trasition to Democracy. A historical reconstruction of urban naming practiques underpins the interconections between discourses, ideologies, practices and policies that shaped the post-dictatorial space in Granada.
זמן מִנְחָה, שם תערוכתה של האמנית מיכל שכנאי-יעקבי, נושא את ההקשר לפולחן הנופלים בישראל, שהתכונן ... more זמן מִנְחָה, שם תערוכתה של האמנית מיכל שכנאי-יעקבי, נושא את ההקשר לפולחן הנופלים בישראל, שהתכונן כרכיב בתוך "דת הלאום", וביקש להעניק משמעות של קדושה לקורבנות, ועל בסיס זה להבנות את היחסים בין המדינה למשפחות הנופלים. בעבודתה האמנותית חוקרת מיכל שכנאי-יעקבי את שיח השכול וההנצחה בישראל, את הרטוריקה שלו, ואת הדרכים הגלויות והסמויות שבהן כוננה משפחת השכול מקרב המשפחות שאיבדו את יקיריהן בנסיבות צבאיות. כמי שגדלה כ"יתומת צה"ל", מונח שמראש מנכס את האבל הפרטי לזה הלאומי ואותו לסדר הצבאי, מבקשת האמנית לבחון כיצד מהלכים אלה השתיתו את המסד לחרושת הזיכרון הלאומי, ובד בבד עיצבו את מעמד השכולים בהתאמה אליו, דרך שתי פרקטיקות מרכזיות: טקסי יום הזיכרון הציבוריים ומשלוח של איגרות זיכרון במעטפות מאוירות ומבוילות במיוחד, המלוות במנחות-שי למשפחות השכולות.
Catalogo de la Muestra, fruto de graduadas ABR-Oranim College- Israel : Ritos Y Rituales, Mayo- ... more Catalogo de la Muestra, fruto de graduadas ABR-Oranim College- Israel : Ritos Y Rituales, Mayo- Junio 2017 presentada en el Museo CASA DE LOS TIROS-Granada
השאיפה לתיקון עולם: מחשבות על אמנות יהודית ופמיניסטית ועל פרשנות, הקריאות ישראליות, גיליון 3, 270-274, 2023
מאמר ביקורת על ספרו של דוד שפרבר, ביקורת נאמנה: אמנות יהודי ת־פמיניסטית בישראל ובארצות הברית. י... more מאמר ביקורת על ספרו של דוד שפרבר, ביקורת נאמנה: אמנות יהודי ת־פמיניסטית בישראל ובארצות הברית. ירושלים: הוצאת הספרים ע"ש י"ל מאגנס, 2021
Uploads
Papers by Yael Guilat
Artists: Lucy Elkivity, Alejandra Okret, Lili Liliana Fisher, Doron Adar, Hannan Abu- hussein.
Curator: Yael Guilat
Production: Netali Breuer
Designer: Ashraf Fawakhry
Photo: Yigal Pardo
English Traduction: Rachel Kessel, Arabic Translation: Nawaf Atamnah
The text is presented here in English, Hebrew and Arabic
Amid the social and political changes that Israel has seen in recent decades, gender and ethnicity and their place in Jewish rituals are finding more and more representation in art discourse and visual culture. Life in a Jewish and democratic state, as Israel defines itself, lays questions of halakha (codified religious law) at the doorsteps of Jewish women, religious or not. Thus, halakhic issues appear in the current works of Orthodox women artists, joining those artists who define themselves as Masorti (traditionalist) and others who do not lead religious lives but tackle post-secular challenges as secular believers or are just non-observant. Discussed below are video art works by several Jewish-Israeli women artists, focusing on those who identify as Mizrahi-Masorti and use gendered lenses to investigate the Israeli post-secular discourse on halakhic texts and practices from intersectional perspectives on body, ethnicity, and gender. Their critical view transcends the trite binary demarcation of Israel’s religious and secular realms. Their video art works, I argue, express a demand for dual recognition of their reference to Jewish law: by Israel’s hegemonic society and by its art discourse. Through them, these artists define and redefine their female Mizrahi-Masorti identity as a continuous performance of the self.
Available through Project Muse
Artists: Lucy Elkivity, Alejandra Okret, Lili Liliana Fisher, Doron Adar, Hannan Abu- hussein.
Curator: Yael Guilat
Production: Netali Breuer
Designer: Ashraf Fawakhry
Photo: Yigal Pardo
English Traduction: Rachel Kessel, Arabic Translation: Nawaf Atamnah
The text is presented here in English, Hebrew and Arabic
Amid the social and political changes that Israel has seen in recent decades, gender and ethnicity and their place in Jewish rituals are finding more and more representation in art discourse and visual culture. Life in a Jewish and democratic state, as Israel defines itself, lays questions of halakha (codified religious law) at the doorsteps of Jewish women, religious or not. Thus, halakhic issues appear in the current works of Orthodox women artists, joining those artists who define themselves as Masorti (traditionalist) and others who do not lead religious lives but tackle post-secular challenges as secular believers or are just non-observant. Discussed below are video art works by several Jewish-Israeli women artists, focusing on those who identify as Mizrahi-Masorti and use gendered lenses to investigate the Israeli post-secular discourse on halakhic texts and practices from intersectional perspectives on body, ethnicity, and gender. Their critical view transcends the trite binary demarcation of Israel’s religious and secular realms. Their video art works, I argue, express a demand for dual recognition of their reference to Jewish law: by Israel’s hegemonic society and by its art discourse. Through them, these artists define and redefine their female Mizrahi-Masorti identity as a continuous performance of the self.
Available through Project Muse