The Kiefer Prize winners

Ruti Sela creates provocative, incisive, and uncompromising video works. Her work is characterized by humor, almost ruthless curiosity, and meticulous aesthetics. It is focused on the Israeli experience, drawing from it universally human statements. She begins at the margins and then moves toward the center. At the same time, she deals with the relationship between words, images, and sound, and explores the relationship between fantasy and reality in both art and life.

Sela skillfully identifies, extracts, and presents sharp and precise moments of humanity that are both disturbing and moving. Through the camera, she observes people whom she marks and collects from the Israeli landscape—people who are often looked at but not really liked: nighttime passengers on an intercity bus, demonstrators against the Pride Parade in Jerusalem, prostitutes, “good boys” seeking bizarre sexual encounters on online dating sites, partygoers gathered in a nightclub’s restroom. Through them, she examines accepted perceptions and values, deconstructs them, and reconstructs them.

At first glance, Sela’s video works seem to belong to the genre of documentary cinema. A closer look reveals that she does not settle for mere documentation or voyeurism. The camera’s prominent presence turns the filmed events into a kind of performance in which she actively participates. In most of her films, she manipulates the filmed subjects through verbal and physical provocations. At the same time, she adopts the behavior and appearance of the people she films.

In one of her films, she even swaps places with the filmed subject, blurring the usual dichotomy of object-subject in the Western art tradition. The artistic language she has developed also contains characteristics of the television “reality” genre.

Through manipulative temptation, she maneuvers her “actors” into situations of physical and emotional exposure, examining the accepted separations of the intimate and the public, the real and the false, the good and the bad. Sela’s excellent control of the photographic medium, the meticulous editing of the films, and the accompanying sound create a rich and seductive visual language.

The Ingeborg Bachmann Scholarship, founded by Anselm Kiefer, for the year 2005 is awarded to the artist Talia Keinan.

Talia Keinan, born in 1978, is an artist working in drawing, collage, and installation. Her works often incorporate diverse materials, including video and music. Keinan graduated with high honors from the Department of Art and Design at Bezalel Academy in 2003 and participated in a student exchange program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, USA. She is currently enrolled in the continuing education program in art and photography in Tel Aviv.

Keinan focuses primarily on video works presented as sculptural objects, where sound plays a central role, alongside painting and drawing. Her refined works depict everyday reality as “an event where intimate, poetic, and quiet dramas unfold.” Time in her pieces seems to stand still, creating a sense of suspended moments. The video compositions she crafts aspire to a painterly and static quality, with sound serving as an integral part of their enchanting effect. In her video works, Keinan uses light as a tangible material, creating a mirage-like tension between what is perceived and what truly exists. Through light and sound, she transforms her creations into immersive spaces that engulf the viewer in a strange sensation, as if the elements within her works are operating autonomously.

Keinan has presented solo exhibitions at the Herzliya Museum of Art in 2003 and the Noga Gallery in Tel Aviv in 2004 with the show Walking Distance. She received the Shmuel Givon Award from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2004 and is currently preparing for an installation at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, to be presented next year.

Winner of Kiefer Scholarship in Painting / Sculpture – 2003
a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Jerusalem.

Winner of Kiefer Scholarship in Painting / Sculpture – 2001
a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Jerusalem.

Winner of Kiefer Scholarship in Painting / Sculpture – 1999
a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Jerusalem.

Winner of Kiefer Scholarship in Painting / Sculpture – 1998
a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Jerusalem.

Winner of Kiefer Scholarship in Painting / Sculpture – 1997
a graduate of the Beit Berl College, School of Art, Kfar Saba

The Ingeburg Bachman Scholarship for 1997, founded by the artist Anselm Kiefer, was awarded to the artist Judith Sasportas, one of the most prominent artists of her generation in Israel. Sasportas specializes in creating three-dimensional compositions and complex installations using mixed techniques, including drawing, sculpture, video, and sound. Her works emphasize the interplay between objects and the spaces in which they are displayed, offering multi-sensory artistic experiences.

Judith Sasportas, born in 1969, began her artistic journey studying painting with the painter Lina Golan in Ashdod. In 1988, she started her studies at the Center for Visual Arts at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva. At the age of 19, she was accepted into the art department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, where she graduated with honors in 1993. During her studies, she gravitated toward sculpture, leading to her acceptance into the sculpture department at the Cooper Union Academy of Arts and Sciences in New York.

Sasportas pursued a master’s degree in art and philosophy at Bezalel and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1993, at just 24 years old, she began teaching at Bezalel while continuing to develop her distinctive artistic language.

Sasportas’ works are characterized by site-specific installations that integrate sculpture, drawing, video, and sound. Her creations explore a dialogue between unconscious, invisible layers and the visible, spoken world. Works such as Cradle (1991) and Tin Weight (1996) incorporate three-dimensional structures inspired by everyday objects, inviting viewers into an intense, immersive sensory experience.

Sasportas’ creative world was profoundly shaped by her childhood experiences at home. Her father, a carpenter, and her mother, a seamstress, instilled in her a deep appreciation for meticulous and precise craftsmanship. The family home served as a creative hub, where her father designed and built furniture tailored to the family’s evolving needs, while her mother designed and sewed their clothes. Sasportas described her father’s carpentry workshop as a “second home,” where she learned about the interplay of material, weight, gravity, and physical energy.

The concepts of precision and order were also reflected in her mother’s work, which focused on precise patterns integral to shaping the home’s spatial design. Sasportas emphasizes the impact of the concept of an “internal structure”—a hidden order and logic underlying all things—on her art and worldview.

Drawing on personal life experiences and psychological and cognitive connections, Sasportas’ work creates an intimate dialogue between people and the objects surrounding them, while shedding light on how space and material influence human consciousness.

The Ingeborg Bachmann Scholarship, founded by Anselm Kiefer, for the year 1995 is awarded to the artist Sigalit Landau for her original work addressing various narratives of Israeli society. In her distinctive style and expressive artistry, Landau explores social issues through diverse mediums, conveying themes of identity and the interrelationship between humanity and its environment. Her work reflects the fragility and resilience of the human condition, capturing the complexities of society.

Sigalit Landau, born in Jerusalem in 1969, is an interdisciplinary artist working with installation, video, photography, and sculpture. She graduated with honors from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 1994 and is currently pursuing her master’s degree.

After graduating from Bezalel, Landau participated in two group exhibitions as part of the “Art Focus” project. In this initiative, artists showcased their works in vacant spaces within the shops of Tel Aviv’s new central bus station. For her contribution, Landau created an installation that simulated the life of a homeless person residing in the station. As part of the performance, Landau herself chose to live there for a month.

Landau is currently presenting a solo exhibition at the Israel Museum. In her installation, Harbait, she juxtaposes Mount Moriah and the Dome of the Rock with the museum environment. Her work incorporates everyday objects, transformed and re-sculpted, to evoke broader themes. At the center of the exhibition space stands a low structure fashioned from computer mouse pads, designed in the shape of the “drinking stone” on the Temple Mount. In its center, Landau carved a crater where she grew mushrooms cultivated from unconscious humans (referred to as “plants”). Nearby, she constructed a tent from doors and household items. Expressive bronze sculptures and other objects are suspended from the ceiling on chains. The exhibition also features video projections that create a dialogue between the museum’s physical and conceptual preservation efforts and the political-social environment surrounding the museum as a national “mountain.” One video includes an interview with a restorer from the Israel Museum, explaining the “smoking” process used to disinfect artworks and eliminate fungi and bacteria. Another segment shows Landau dressed in a black nylon suit and gas mask, photographed at a landfill near the Arab village of El Azaria.