The Jewish Museum Berlin presented Yael Bartana – Redemption Now. This large-scale solo exhibition of the contemporary artist Yael Bartana investigated the power of imagination and art’s redemptive potential. For more than twenty years, Bartana has been inquiring into grand historical narratives that help to constitute national and other collective identities.

The show brought together more than fifty early and more recent works, including video installations, photographs, and neon works.

The exhibition followed an eschatological topos – the recurring idea that a leader may bring salvation – and its deconstruction. At the core of the show was the commissioned video work Malka Germania (Hebrew for “Queen Germania”), which Bartana conceived for the Jewish Museum and produced at historically charged locations across Berlin.

An androgynous savior figure comes to the German capital. Her journey floods the city with scenes from an imagined collective unconscious; past and future merge in an alternative present. The installation’s theme of collective redemption addressed traumata, hopes of salvation, and the desire for change.