As early as 1996, her younger brother, Gil, was Yefman’s first model and inspiration. She began an intimate image record of their adolescence, using the camera to invent multiple novel identities in an imaginative world they constructed for themselves. This body of work became a joint archaeological journey, chronicling two siblings’ symbiotic existence as collaborative artists, and their mutual desire to live exterior to the norm. The most complex part of this project occurred between 2000-2009, during which time Yefman documented Gil’s intimate process of transformation from male to a female, and her subsequent transformation to beyond definitions. Rebelling against conventional gender roles as well as familial ones, Let it Bleed combines images of formal role-play and performative acts with snapshots and mixed videotapes that expose very real emotional situations, and chronicling an experience of youth through a curve of fantasies, hopes, and desires; disappointments, confusion, conflicts, and flirtation with familial taboos.
The exhibition Let it Bleed was first shown at Participant inc. New York, in 2010, and at Oslo Kunstforening gallery, Oslo, Norway, in 2019. The Artist Book “Let it Bleed” was published in 2016, as a limited edition of 500 copies, by Little Big Man books, L.A. The edition is sold out.
Landscape with a scratch, scrapbook page from “Let it Bleed,” 2010.
Hug, B & W print, 1996.
Cards in the Tent, Light box / Print, 36X26 inch, photographed 1997, printed 2010.The Only Way to Survive, a double spread from the book “Let it Bleed,” 2016.Gil & Omer, Archival inkjet, photographed 2002, printed 2016.Gil’s Face, 2001-2, printed for the book “Let it Bleed,” 2016.
Let’s Get Lost, a double spread from the book “Let it Bleed” (with excerpt from Shva Salhoov, Onat Hameshugaim, Season of the Lunatics, 1996.We are still feeling Extremely well, Collage documentation, 2010.
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Gil Yefman, Rona & I Doll, crochet knitting, motor, 250x200x50 cm, 2010
Gil Yefman is a trans-disciplinary conceptual artist who deconstructs and transforms canonised familiar myths from varied beliefs and traditions. By undermining the structured definitions and portrayal of the other, Yefman explores and cherishes the intrinsic potential of the extra-ordinary. Yefman uses archival materials and documents as points of departure, from which the knitting process resembles writing — texts and contexts become textures that suggest an alternative examination, reflection, and interpretation than dogmatic translations. Yefman’s collaborative projects fuse memory, trauma, and the body with transgenerational multilayered relations where soft materials dissolve hard subject matters.
Rona Yefman (b. Israel) lives and works between Brooklyn, New York, and Israel. Rona is working in photography, video, text, and installation. Her work explores issues of identity through a range of human experiences by collaborating with individuals who have formed a radical persona that inscribes the iconic and the absurd of our time. She received her MFA from Columbia University in New York City in 2009. Her recent solo shows were held at Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway, 2019, SIC Gallery, Helsinki, Finland, 2015; Derek Eller Gallery, New York City; Sommer Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, 2012; The Sculpture Center, 2011; and Participant Inc, 2010. Those shows have been reviewed in Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, Modern Painters, and Bomb Magazine. In 2016, Rona’s first artist book, Let it Bleed (1995-2010), was published by Little Big Man Books, CA. Her works have presented in several public and private collections such as: The Tel Aviv Museum, The Israel Museum, The Rubell Family Collection, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, NC, US. Haret’z Daily Newspaper, Art Collection, ISR, among others. Since 2014 Rona has been a Mentor at the MFA Program at Columbia University and teaches in different photo and art academies in Israel.
Gil Yefman (b. Israel) graduated from Bezalel Academy for Art and Design, Jerusalem in 2003. Yefman received the Rappaport Prize for a young Israeli artist 2017 and awarded “The Young Artist Prize” given by the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Science, 2010. Yefman participated in residencies such as “Artport,” Tel Aviv, 2019-2020; “Elsewhere,” Greensboro, 2019; Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Japan, 2015; “Fountainhead”, Miami, 2014; to name a few. His works are present in private and public collections, including the Jewish Museum, New York City; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Herzliya Museum of Art; and the Shoken Family Collection, Tel Aviv.
