Changing room | Dana Yoeli, Agi Yoeli

Curator: Avi Lubin

In a setting that to some extent looks like an enlarged model, are displayed the ceramic works of Agi Yoeli and Dana Yoeli, grandmother and granddaughter, including a large lion, a terracotta cat, life-size male feet, a decorative fountain, Ionic pillars, miniature trees and a giant flower.  The combination of the works of these two artists and the installation creates a synthesis of a sculptural ceramic environment, a set for a play, an historical museum, and the ruins of an archaeological site.  In the past years Dana has begun making ceramic works, a medium that her grandmother specialized in, but it is the first time she examines their connection and the influence of her grandmother on her practice. In a contemporary and liberated installation she re- reads the body of work made by  her grandmother, the inheritance of her family.

Agi (Agnes) Yoeli (1921-2018, Czekoslovakia)– Yoeli studied at the Decorative Arts Academy in Budapest and after the Second World War studied sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy in Prague and then at the Art Academy in Stockholm.  In 1947 she emigrated to Israel and in 1949 married Prof. Pinhas Yoeli.  Yoeli lived and worked in Haifa and Tel Aviv and was a guest lecturer at the Royal College of Sculpture in Melbourne, Australia, at the Fine Art Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, and at the Wisconsin University School of Art, USA.  She exhibited her work in many solo and group exhibitions in Israel, Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, Turkey, and the USA.

In her work she challenged the characteristics and technology of traditional work with clay while reflecting on the human condition; from the series of friendly, human-like animals through the astronaut families, with a sensitive eye and humorous approach.  Her work was made mainly in series: cats, huge fruit and vegetables, Olympic gymnasts at their peak, groups of characters and Victorian pictures (Victoriana), touching in their sensitivity, and a group of sculptures/installations of places and that are situations and situations that are places. Yoeli was free of the big questions posed by the founding makers of Israeli ceramics such as: what defines local ceramic making and what makes it Israeli? Instead of raising these questions she worked within broader cultural connections, sometimes with a sting and humor.

Dana Yoeli (b.1979, USA) a multimedia artist, living and working in Tel Aviv.- Her work mixes different styles and techniques and varies between big site-specific installations, exact pencil and graphite drawings, artist books of cut photographs, miniature maquettes, detailed porcelain plates and large concrete walls.  In many of her works Yoeli presents stories of remembrance and personal memorialization which often appear incoherent and subjective, and become collective ethos of memory and immortalization, functioning as nostalgia, memory and memorial ceremonies.

Yoeli is a bachelor and master degree graduate of the Bazalel Academy of Art as well as HAW, Hamburg, Germany.  Yoeli has exhibited solo exhibitions and projects at the Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Magasin III Jaffa book shop, FRIZE Hamburg, Herzlia Museum, Beit Bialik Museum, CIRCLE -1 Gallery, Berlin, Chelouche Gallery Tel Aviv, Artist Studios Tel Aviv, Beit Hatzayar Jerusalem, Kav 16 Gallery, Dana Gallery Yad Mordechai, Bezalel Gallery Tel Aviv and Tevi Dresner Gallery as well as many group exhibitions in Israel and abroad including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Kustraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien Berlin, Artists House Jerusalem, Petah Tikva Museum, Ashdod Museum, Haifa Museum, Gutman Museum, Bat Yam Museum, KUBUS Hanover, GSA Glasgow, and many other important locations.

She received awards including Asylum Arts at The Neighborhood 2023, Ministry of Culture award for independent artists (2022), Culture Department of Hamburg City Council award for research (with Suza Bauer) (2019), Mifal Hapais (2017), Ostrovsky Family Foundation (2016), Tel Aviv City Council and Rabinovitch Foundation (2015), Rabinovitch Foundation (2014, 2015), Mifal Hapais for the publication of a book (2013), Schir-IDA Artist Residency (2013), Ministry of Culture young artist award (2012), Noam Shodofsky Prize for  young artists (2005), DAAD (2005).  Her work is found in private and public collections in Israel and abroad.