Yael Kanarek
Yael Kanarek is an Israeli American artist based in New York City that is known for pioneering use of the Internet and of multilingualism in work of art.
Background and education
Born in New York and raised in Israel, Kanarek returned to New York in 1991 for art school and began exhibiting in galleries. Kanarek was a leading figure in the early days of the internet art scene in New York and collaborated for over ten years with Eyebeam, where she founded and led the Upgrade!, an international network of artists and curators concerned with art, technology and activism.Kanarek has been developing an integrated media project called World of Awe since 1995. At the core of World of Awe is "The Traveler's Journal"—an original narrative that uses the ancient genre of the traveler's tale to explore connections between storytelling, travel, memory and technology. Her pioneering online art practice was featured in 2002 Whitney Biennial, which included a World of Awe portal and a series of related drawings. In that same year, she was also commissioned by the SF MoMA and Turbulence.org to continue its development online.
She earned a Master of Fine Arts in 2007 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Empire State College in 1993. Kanarek teaches new media art at Pratt Institute.
Career
Since 2003, her practice has been focused on multilingualism, and her observation of how language online acts as a border and a space.Kanarek's art has been primarily exhibited in the US and Europe. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at Jewish Museum (Manhattan), Nelly Aman Gallery in Tel Aviv, bitforms gallery in New York, Sala Uno Gallery in Rome, the Moving Image Gallery in New York, and Space Time Light Gallery in New York. Kanarek's work has also been featured by The Drawing Center, The Kitchen, American Museum of the Moving Image, Whitney Museum of American Art; Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Beral Madra Contemporary Art in Istanbul, Rhizome (organization), Exit Art, A.I.R. Gallery, Holster Projects in London, LIMN Gallery in San Francisco, Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh, CU Museum in Boulder, Arena 1 in Santa Monica, SIGGRAPH; California College of the Arts, Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York, Derek Eller Gallery in New York, 303 Gallery in New York, Schroeder Romero Gallery in New York, among many others.
She has been a founder of the company KANAREK since 2013, a fine jewelry company that specializes in text jewelry. They use custom text created by her and work closely with the clients to create these fine jewelry.
Specific works
World of Awe series, 1994 -2011
World of Awe is a cross-disciplinary project centering around The Traveler's Journal, an original narrative started in 1994 and completed in 2011. Set in an undetermined future past, it reveals the story of a lone traveler who searches for a lost treasure in a parallel world called Sunset/Sunrise. The portal to this world is on 419 East 6th Street in Manhattan.The narrative first appeared in paintings, followed by performance and the early net art website Love Letters from a World of Awe in 1995. Since then, the project has expanded into other media including sculpture, installation, and Text works. The culture of digital media and technology of the 80's and 90's are critical to the narrative. It functions as both a visual and literary devoice that forms the identity of the traveler. The work was shown in Bitforms gallery, New York City, in 2004 and Rhizome's gallery in 2016.