By deconstructing and transforming canonized familiar myths from varied beliefs and traditions, and creating fantastic realms where characters with elusive gender, sexual and political identities serve as alternative cultural heroes – I try to challenge and undermine the structured definitions and portrayal of the “other”, in order to explore and cherish the intrinsic potential of the extraordinary.
Through a manifold spectrum of practices and media, and with a prevalent predilection for the craftswomanship of crochet knitting, I indulge in the therapeutic virtues of knitting as means to dwell on personal and collective traumas, as well as to reflect upon recurrent obsessive patterns in mankind’s societies.
The act of knitting resembles writing: long, rapid, carefully calculated and monotonous movements, a collection of syllables that create a narrative, the object.
The texts and contexts become textures that suggest an alternative examination, reflection and interpretation to dogmatic translations.
Yefman graduated from Bezalel Academy for Art and Design, Jerusalem in 2003, and received a two year fellowship at the Alma program for Jewish culture studies, 2008-2010.
He is the Rappaport Prize laureate for young Israeli artist, 2017, and awarded ”The Young Artist Prize” given by the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Science, 2010.
Residencies programs include The Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Japan 2015, IDA Schir Residency, Hannover 2014, Fountainhead Residency, Miami 2014, Artist residency, granted by the NRW Kunststiftung and The Bronner Family, Düsseldorf 2011-12.
His works are present in several private and public collections, among which: The Jewish Museum, NYC, The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Tel Aviv Museum of art, Herzliya Museum of art, Shoken Family Collection, Tel Aviv, The Bronner Family Collection, Düsseldorf, and private collections.
Selected solo exhibitions include: “Kibbutz Buchenwald”, Tel Aviv Museum of Art 2018, “Body Of Work”, Haifa museum of art 2017, “The Third Dress”, Dana art gallery, Yad Mordechai Kibbutz 2016, “To Me You Are Beautiful – Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn”, Ronald Feldman Fine Art, NYC 2014, “H” The Container, Tokyo 2013, “In Return”, Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv 2011.
Selected group exhibitions include: “ Dread & Delight”, Weatherspoon art museum, NC, 2018, “The Queer Biennale – What If Utopia”, L.A. 2018, “Violated: Women in Holocaust and Genocide”,
Ronald Feldman Gallery, NYC, 2018, “Woven and Untangled”, Tel Aviv Museum 2017, “(SIGNAL)”, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY 2016, “Kumzitz”, KIT museum, Düsseldorf 2016, “Passage – A Day In Eternity”, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Aomori, 2015, “Otherness – I Is Somebody Else”, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris 2013, “About Stupidity” Petach Tikva Museum of Art 2013, “Galicia Mon Amour”, “Body Without Body”, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin 2011, “Animamix Biennial – Attract and Attack”, MOCA museum, Taipei, 2009.
