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Edited: June 26, 2023
Yael Kanarek
Pronouns
She/her
Date and place of birth
b. 1967, New York, NY
Current location
New York, NY
Year(s) of residency and/or fellowship
2006, Project Resident

Yael Kanarek is an artist based in New York City that is known for pioneering use of the Internet and of multilingualism in work of art.

Through storytelling and translation, Kanarek reshapes cultural associations of language. Her work enters spaces of meaning determined by global networks and her observation of the Internet as a metaphorical space written in human and computer languages. In recent years, her creative practice centers on the dynamics and form of multilingualism and the synchronization of narrative with standard time.

Selected for the 2002 Whitney Biennial, exhibitions of her work also include The Drawing Center, New York; Beral Madra Contemporary Art, Istanbul; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; CU Museum, Boulder; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University; The Jewish Museum, New York; Exit Art; The Kitchen; American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; LIMN Gallery, San Francisco; Holster Projects, London; Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh; bitforms gallery, New York; Nelly Aman, Tel Aviv; Boston CyberArts Festival; HVCCA, Peekskill; Arena 1, Santa Monica; California College of the Arts, San Francisco; Orsini Palace, Bomarzo; and Sala Uno Gallery, Rome. Kanarek’s work has also been shown in New York at Kenny Schachter Contemporary, Silverstein Gallery, Ronald Feldman Gallery, Derek Eller Gallery, A.I.R Gallery, 303 Gallery, Schroeder Romero Gallery, and the Art in Embassies program of the US States Department.

In addition to a Rockefeller New Media Fellowship, an Eyebeam Honorary Fellowship and a LABA Fellowship, Kanarek has received grants from the Jerome Foundation Media Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts; commissions from the San  Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Turbulence.org; Kanarek’s distinctions also include the 2014 WTN Award in the Arts and 2002 CNRS/UNESCO, Lewis Carroll Argos Prize, Paris. In 1999, she founded Upgrade! International, a network that served the New Media Art community for ten years.

Kanarek holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and teaches Net Art at the MFA program at Pratt Institute.

In 2013, she founded KANAREK, a fine jewelry company that specializes in text jewelry.

In 2016, she began an initiative to regender the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), by reversing the genders of all characters. More information about this project is available at Beit Toratah.

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