Yael Bartana: Bury Our Weapons, Not Our Bodies!

Beyond the walls of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a new site-specific public performance conceived by Yael Bartana brings together funerary tradition, military ritual, and personal testimony to challenge systems of violence and displacement. Bartana’s performance is a call to action, burying weapons into a choreographed funeral—a living monument—that will include a staged procession and a series of eulogies about war and survival.

• Independence National Historical Park: A procession from Washington Square Park, culminating in a performance and collective eulogy at Independence National Historical Park will take place at 2 p.m.
• Philadelphia Museum of Art West Entrance: Following the procession and eulogy, the performance will proceed to the William H. Reilly memorial—the park space below the West Entrance—between the Museum’s sculpture garden and the Fairmount Waterworks at 4 p.m.

In addition to the site-specific performance, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents the immersive installation Yael Bartana: And Europe Will be Stunned, on view September 21, 2018–January 1, 2019. The solo exhibition takes the complex history of Jewish-Polish identity as its point of departure in addressing themes of nationhood, memory, and belonging that are integral to Bartana’s work.