Tashlikh

Taking inspiration from the Jewish practice of tashlik, throwing bread in a river to expiate sins, Yael Bartana creates a common space in which perpetrators and survivors of genocides and ethnic persecution, the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, ethnic cleansing and civil wars in Sudan and Eritrea, are confronted through material ties with the horrors of the past: their personal belongings. Objects are more than the materials from which they are composed and their functions, they are impregnated with memories and associations. Bartana’s work introduces a new ritual: throwing away objects that recall trauma to achieve psychological liberation.