
Yehudith Sasportas
Winner of Kiefer Scholarship 1996

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.
