October 20, 2002 through January 19, 2003

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is proud to present Israeli artist Yehudit Sasportas in her first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. MATRIX 200: Yehudit Sasportas By the River is the latest exhibition in the BAM/PFA's MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art, and opens on Sunday, October 20. By the River, a new site-specific installation commissioned by BAM/PFA, comprises a series of more than 70 handpainted wood panels and addresses themes of national, cultural, and personal identity.

Yehudit Sasportas's work fuses drawing, painting, sculpture, and architecture. In The Carpenter and the Seamstress, (2000), which is her most recognized project to date, Sasportas created an installation based upon the floor plan of her family's public housing apartment in Israel. In this work Sasportas represented the disparate and heterogeneous nature of Israeli culture by covering the gallery walls with panels decorated with patterns evocative of her family's homeland in Morocco, and the floor with rigid geometric shapes of Zionist modern architecture.

In By the River Sasportas similarly uses rectangular and circular wooden panels of varying sizes and thickness, each carefully handpainted with patterns including schematic landscapes, urban skylines, topographical maps, and architectural details. Using this language of signs and scientific information, Sasportas creates an arresting visual metaphor that functions both as a self-portrait and as her representation of contemporary Israeli life.

Sasportas was included in the 1999 Istanbul Biennial and the Ninth Triennale, India, 1998. She has had solo exhibitions at the Ramat Gan Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. In 2001 she was the recipient of the Gottesdiener Prize, awarded annually to a young Israeli artist.

Public programs
Artist's Talk
Sunday, October 29, 3 p.m.