Salonnièr #9
Nurit Yarden
Sojourn at Friedrichshain neighborhood, Berlin
Nurit Yarden
Sojourn at Friedrichshain neighborhood, Berlin
|
Nurit Yarden’s residency at Rotem Salon Berlin marks the realization of a new chapter in her ongoing project Sojourn - a process of research and engagement with Israeli communities in diverse locations.
This time Yarden is focusing on the Israeli community in Friedrichshain, Berlin. Each place carries its own distinct characteristics and a unique history. Background: Since December 2015, Yarden has been photographing Israeli public spaces. Her desire to understand the society in which she lives and how public spaces reflect it led her to initiate Sojourn - an ongoing independent residency project that has no end date. As part of this platform she travels three times a year for a week to a new place where she has not been. She finds a contact person that helps with getting a modest accommodation and connects her with the locals. She schedules meetings, learns about the place and writes a diary with quotes from the conversations held. The rest of the time she takes pictures. Yarden's goal is to portray Israeli communities of all types and from all sectors. To date, she has visited seventeen townships in Israel. All of them are to be found in the digital library on her website, with a book for each Sojourn. The quotes she collects are inseparable from the project: they capture the voices of local residents and serve as the documentary element of each piece. The objective is to foreground the complexity of Israeli society; meanwhile, the photos reflect Yarden’s personal impressions. Recently, following an increase in emigration from Israel by diverse individuals, Yarden expanded her research to include new Israeli communities abroad. Her interest is to meet people who left Israel before 7th October 2023, as well as those who left due to the massacre and wars. In Friedrichshain, she intends to follow the same working framework as in previous Sojourns in Israel: the first three days are designated for meetings with Israeli residents of the neighborhood to learn about the area and their experiences as migrants in Berlin. The remaining four days will be spent photographing. To the digital library on Nurit Yarden’s website, please visit: www.nurityarden.com |
|
Nurit Yarden (b. 1959) is an artist-photographer, curator, and lecturer. Raised between Paris and Tel Aviv, she lives and works in Tel Aviv. She studied psychology and art history at the University of Haifa, as well as photography at Camera Obscura, before graduating from the Photography Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem.
Yarden’s work combines staged and direct photography, unfolding through long-term, subject-driven series. Her work moves between private and public spaces, exploring the relationship between personal experience and broader social realities. Her early projects, which focused on domestic themes such as home, family and gendered trauma. These were exhibited in Visual Diaries (Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, 2002), followed by Home Cooking (Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, 2005) and Family Files (Jewish Museum, Munich, 2009).
Since 2009, her work has shifted towards the public realm, inspired by her involvement with “Machsom Watch” (Checkpoint Watch), a human rights organisation of Israeli women who monitor and document the conduct of soldiers and police officers at checkpoints in the West Bank. There she documented the Kalandia checkpoint as part of a broader engagement with the realities of occupation. Alongside this she has developed an ongoing photographic exploration of Israeli public spaces, marked by a critical and often understated gaze. Since 2011, Yarden has maintained a visual diary based on wandering, expanding from her immediate surroundings in Tel Aviv to locations across the country. This body of work was presented in Homeland (Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019).
In 2016, Yarden initiated the ongoing project Sojourn, an independent self-initiated residency project through which she travels to unfamiliar localities in Israel, and creates a cumulative archive of images and texts. To date, she has created a digital library comprising 17 books. One for each sojourn. One part of the project was recently exhibited Sojourn-The Katamonim, (The New Gallery Teddy, Jerusalem, 2024).
Yarden’s work can be understood as a political-social diary grounded in movement and focusing on what is often overlooked: structures of power, sexual violence, and life under occupation. Her works are part of major art collections at The Tel-Aviv Museum, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, The Herzliya Museum, Herzeliya, The Bat-Yam Museum, Bat-yam and more.
Yarden’s work combines staged and direct photography, unfolding through long-term, subject-driven series. Her work moves between private and public spaces, exploring the relationship between personal experience and broader social realities. Her early projects, which focused on domestic themes such as home, family and gendered trauma. These were exhibited in Visual Diaries (Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, 2002), followed by Home Cooking (Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, 2005) and Family Files (Jewish Museum, Munich, 2009).
Since 2009, her work has shifted towards the public realm, inspired by her involvement with “Machsom Watch” (Checkpoint Watch), a human rights organisation of Israeli women who monitor and document the conduct of soldiers and police officers at checkpoints in the West Bank. There she documented the Kalandia checkpoint as part of a broader engagement with the realities of occupation. Alongside this she has developed an ongoing photographic exploration of Israeli public spaces, marked by a critical and often understated gaze. Since 2011, Yarden has maintained a visual diary based on wandering, expanding from her immediate surroundings in Tel Aviv to locations across the country. This body of work was presented in Homeland (Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019).
In 2016, Yarden initiated the ongoing project Sojourn, an independent self-initiated residency project through which she travels to unfamiliar localities in Israel, and creates a cumulative archive of images and texts. To date, she has created a digital library comprising 17 books. One for each sojourn. One part of the project was recently exhibited Sojourn-The Katamonim, (The New Gallery Teddy, Jerusalem, 2024).
Yarden’s work can be understood as a political-social diary grounded in movement and focusing on what is often overlooked: structures of power, sexual violence, and life under occupation. Her works are part of major art collections at The Tel-Aviv Museum, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, The Herzliya Museum, Herzeliya, The Bat-Yam Museum, Bat-yam and more.