Zamach (Assassination) is nightmarish... Bartana’s ability to undermine her subject matter even as it unfolds is unnervingly successful. For anyone who has seen images of fascist architecture hung with flags, footage of Stalin’s funeral, or state-led mourning, the film is not presenting a fictionalised ‘other’ but a weaving-together of a number of narratives from twentieth-century European history. The excessive bathos reaches its nauseating height during the speeches and songs commemorating Sierakowski’s life and achievements, and it is clear that ideals and utopias, particularly when they are embodied in one person or movement, are deeply antithetical to Bartana’s interests. — Rebecca Lewin, This Is Tomorrow, 1 July 2011
And Europe Will Be Stunned (2011) is an extraordinary trilogy of films by Israeli artist Yael Bartana that premiered in the Polish Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition in Venice, which was the first time that a non-national had represented Poland at the Biennale. Revolving around the activities of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), a political group that calls for the return of 3,300,000 Jews to the land of their forefathers, the films traverse a landscape scarred by the histories of competing nationalisms and militarisms, overflowing with the narratives of the Israeli settlement movement, Zionist dreams, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Palestinian right of return.
Image: Yael Bartana, Zamach (Assasination), 2012 at Hornsey Town Hall, 2012. Courtesy Marcus Leith
at Golden Thread Gallery
Belfast, 23 March -14 May 2017
Yael Bartana's film trilogy And Europe Will be Stunned was shown for the first time in Northern Ireland at Golden Thread Gallery. Bartana's film exploring nationalisms and militarisms took on a new resonance when sited in Belfast.
Image: Yael Bartana, And Europe Will Be Stunned, 2011 presented at Golden Thread Gallery in 2017. Photograph: Simon Mills
at NN Contemporary Art
Northampton, 7 August 2015
Yael Bartana's trilogy of films were presented by NN Contemporary Art in Northampton to coincide with their Polish International season, which brought work by emerging artists based in Poland to Northampton.
Image: the programme for NN Contemporary Art's presentation of And Europe Will Be Stunned, August 2015.
at Plymouth Arts Centre
Plymouth, 8 September - 11 November 2012
Yael Bartana's And Europe Will Be Stunned trilogy was screened as part of the group exhibition 'Artangel at Sea' at Plymouth Arts Centre in the autumn of 2012. Presented alongside Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave and Clio Barnard's The Arbor, these films all feature communities ridden with conflict, and explore the boundary between drama and documentary, in works of extraordinary imagination and power.
Image: Installation view of research materials for the production of the And Europe Will Be Stunned trilogy presented at Plymouth Arts Centre in 2012. Photograph: Dom Moore