Ifa Gallery Stuttgart presents Yael Bartana’s new work "Mir Zaynen Do!" (We Are Here!) (2024).
In communities of the diaspora, music can be a powerful tool for collectively preserving memories. Along with storytelling, traditional languages, and dancing, songs can represent a living home for stateless nations. Yael Bartana’s new work brings together two groups from two different diasporas: Coral Tradição, a Jewish-Brazilian choir born from the now-destroyed Yiddishland (a nation whose borders were defined by the reach of the Yiddish language itself), and Ilú Obá De Min, an Afro-Brazilian Street music ensemble that stems from Candomblé culture. In an exercise of weaving new possible alliances, Bartana’s video is an invitation to imagine the emergence of collective bodies beyond fixed identity labels.
The work was produced in the Teatro de Arte lsraelita Brasileiro (TAIB), which was built in the basement of the Casa do Povo in 1960. The TAIB was created for a future that never fully happened: the return of the Yiddish language. Nevertheless, it became the dream theatre of the experimental performing arts scene in São Paulo in the 1960s and 1970s, only to fall into a crisis in which it still finds itself today. It is in the ruins of this legendary theatre that Bartana imagines a time to come – between past and present, memory and pre-enactment, the sung word and collective choreographies.
Commissioned by the Jewish Brazilian art space Casa do Povo with the support of Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen.
Parallel to this, an artist talk with Yael Bartana, curator Susanne Kaufmann-Valet and ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Secretary General Gitte Zschoch will take place on 17 October at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart as part of the Sommer der Künste. Villa Massimo as a guest in Stuttgart.
17 October 2024, 18:30-19:30h
Artist Talk with Yael Bartana
Staatsgalerie, Metzlersaal, Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 30-32, 70173 Stuttgart
Wednesday – Sunday: 12.00 – 18.00
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays.
Free admission
The ifa Galleries in Stuttgart and Berlin present contemporary art from a global point of view. The work of the ifa Galleries is based on seeing the world from a diversity and plurality of perspectives, discovering new stories, and shaping emancipatory processes, interactions, and artistic spaces. Our focus is on long-term relationships with artists, partners, and visitors, and our exhibitions and education programmes are developed through practices of collaboration that trace global entanglements and piece them together in new forms of narrative.
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