Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Yael Eylat van-Essen, PhD, is a curator and researcher in the field of New-Media, based in Tel-Aviv. Her academic field of research lies between digital culture theory, museology and curatorial theory, the inter-relations between art, science and technology, speculative design and photographic theory. She focuses on the cultural implications of the use of new technologies in particular in the fields of art and design on its various manifestations.

In the last two decades Yael was the head of three academic programs: The Digital Media department in Camera Obscura School of Art, The Art Department in the Kibbutzim College, and the International Curatorial program in collaboration with the Center of Contemporary Art in Tel-Aviv. Currently she is a senior lecturer at the Design Faculty at HIT (Holon Institute of Technology) and she also teaches at the Interdisciplinary master’s program at the Art faculty in Tel-Aviv University.

Her new book Rethinking the Museum was published at the end of 2016. The book, suggests seeing many of the changes taking place in contemporary museums as a result of a paradigmatic cultural shift deriving from the use of new technologies. The book offers a critical reading of the institution of the museum, based on the analysis of basic related concepts and examination of the meanings derived from them in the digital era.

In the last couple of years, she curated many exhibitions in Israel and abroad, among them “Life-Object, Merging Biology and Architecture” at the Israeli Pavilion in the Venice Biennale for Architecture (2016), Bio-Design, Hybrid Fabrications, HIT Research Gallery (2015), NOT YET, ALREADY Architecture and Animation, HIT Research Gallery (2014), IL(L) Machine Exhibition at Ars Electronica Festival (2013) .

Yael is a graduate of the Art Department at Bezalel Academy for Art and Design, MA and PhD from the Art Faculty of Tel Aviv University, and Post-doc from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.