Born in Jerusalem in 1977 and living in Milan, multimedia artist, composer and guitarist Yuval Avital develops his works in a variety of spaces, including public venues, industrial archaeological sites, theatres and museums, challenging the traditional crystallized categories that separate the arts.
In his exhibitions, performances, immersive installations, total-operas, large-scale musical ‘rituals’, and concerts one can find dancers, contemporary music ensembles, masters of ancient cultures, recruited individuals or communities, multi-video projections, meditative tactile ambients, advanced technological instruments, archive materials, scientific data, Sound-Sculpture, painting and printed artworks.
Each of Avital’s artworks is a unique experiential, poetic and emotional microcosm with its own identity, fruit of a meticulous research carried out in a carefully coded language, confronting the reoccurring themes of archetype and structure; ancestral and currant global-era human condition; nature and hybridity; ritual and science.
Avital’s sound and visual artworks have been presented in museums, art foundations, venues and art events such as MANIFESTA Biennial, GAM - Torino, LOOP Festival - Barcelona, Palais de Tokyo - Paris, One World Trade Center, New York, MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome; OSTRALE Dresden Biennial, La Fabbrica de Cioccolato Foundation in Switzerland, Saint Antoine Church Istanbul, Marino Marini Museum in Florence; National Science and Technology Museum “Leonardo da Vinci” in Milan.
In 2022 he was invited by REGGIO PARMA FESTIVAL to create a shared artistic journey. The project IL BESTIARIO DELLA TERRA is realised in close collaboration with the three theatre foundations members of the Reggio Parma Festival, Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, Fondazione Teatro Regio di Parma and Fondazione Teatro Due di Parma. The artist has shared the design and production of four major monographic exhibitions with them:
ANATOMIE SQUISITE exhibition realised in dialogue with the Spallanzani Collection of the Civic Museums in Reggio Emilia, LESSICO ANIMALE. PROLOGO, a restitution at APE Parma Museo of a creative process of transformation performed with nineteen actors, PERSONA, which exhibits Avital’s famous sound masks at Palazzo Marchi, and MEMBRANE, which displays at Chiostri di San Pietro artist’s paintings and the opus Foreing Bodies, presenting an unpublished chapter realized for the occasion in the Reggio Emilia area.
In addition, two large installations were presented in the cities; in Reggio Emilia, a 9 x 80 m mural executed by Simone Ferrarini based on Avital’s drawings and in Parma the icon-sonic installation IL CANTO DELLO ZOOFORO which, inspired by Antelami’s famous zooforo, combines an original composition by Avital interpreted by children from the two cities with a monumental work created with hundreds of meters of fabric. The final act are the three chapters of IL MOSTRARIO, live-performances, installations and videos invading the various spaces of the theatres involved, not only the usual ones but also those normally not accessible to the public.
He is the author of large-scale Installations such as ALMA MATER - the largest sound installation in Italian history, the artwork covers an area of 1200 sqm with a “forest” of 140 loudspeakers, projections and light (Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan 2015); permanent Sound Sculptures such as THE RATTLES GARDEN - composed of fifty wrought-iron wheat-like sculptures and olive trees on which are hanged 180 bells and rattles from every part of the Mediterranean (Mulinum San Floro, Calabria) and OPEN FENCE - a massive Sound-Sculpture (biggest in Italy), of 320 tubular bells, 64 meters long and 4 meters high, playable by 80 visitors simultaneously (East End Studios, Milan).
Among his works outstand: ICON-SONIC POSTCARDS N.2 POSTCARDS FROM ROME, a one year-long-large scale Art-Show in the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome MACRO exploring the roman territory through the voice of its habitants; including numerous performances, art actions, visuals, flash mobs which will conclude into an immersive icon-sonic installation (December 1, 2018 - December 1, 2019); NEPHILIM, a solo exhibition of 60 Singing Masks sound sculptures created in dialogue with 24 Tuscan master artisans (Marino Marini Museum, Florence; October 10, 2019 - December 31, 2019); opening event of Ostrale Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2019, two large-scale multimedia installations and a photographic section. VARIATIONS ON HARMONIC TREMOR - Large-scale solo exhibition which is a result of a detailed exploration of the unique cultural and natural territory of Etna in Sicily, the biggest active volcano of Europe, resulting in over 400 photos, a new sound-sculpture, various video arts pieces, and a main sound and visual polyptych containing over 75 scenes with over 350 participants. (National Science and Technology Museum “Leonardo da Vinci”, Milan; November 16 - December 10, 2017); THREE GRADES OF FOREIGNNESS - a 1500 sqm solo exhibition composed of three installations and various artworks on the complex relationship between Man and Nature. The major installation, “Foreign Bodies”, is a polyptych of 7 parallel projections 21 loudspeakers and of over 8 hours of film and 9 of soundtracks, entirely realized by the artist (Fabbrica del Cioccolato Art Foundation, Switzerland 2017); SPACES UNFOLDED - a sound installation involving artificial intelligence systems and 120 sonic translations of electro-magnetic energy in space created in collaboration with NASA and ESA scientists and research centres (Bergamo 2012).
Yuval Avital’s work has most recently been displayed during his solo exhibition E T E R E (=’ether’) curated by Annette Hofmann, specifically designed for the four floors of BUILDING, opened from April 8th to June 26th, 2021 including 129 artworks, from paintings, photography, video artworks and sound sculptures. 68 of his artworks has been exhibited in the solo Song of the Chimeras at Gowen Contemporary gallery in Geneva, from February 24 until April 23, 2022. He also presented his works at FLORENCE BIENNALE 2021 and BIENNALE LE LATITUDINI DELL’ARTE 2022.
His Operas, symphonic and chamber works were performed by numerous soloists and ensembles, presented in concert halls and festivals such as London Design Festival, Brighton Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival, MiTo SettembreMusica Milan, Tel Aviv Museum, Opera House L.Pavarotti, Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen, RomaEuropa, National Conservatory of China, Centre Pompidou, Palazzo Reale of Milan, and Quinta da Regaleira Palace (Portugal).
His Large scale compositions, involving sometimes hundreds of performers, had been presented as central events such as in the European Capital of Culture (#URLA Matera, for 300 performers; KARAGATAN (Philippines) for 100 traditional gong and bamboo musicians from 11 countries from South East Asia; GARON for 45 tubas, 6 percussions, 3 conductors, choir and live electronics; ending event of Dirty Corner installation by Anish Kapoor (Milan, 2012). His latest electroacoustic composition “Meditations on Theatrum Mundi” was created in occasion of the LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2020, as a sonic dialogue in inspiring collaboration with Daniel Libeskind’s “Theatrum Mundi”.
Different works of Avital are dedicated to humanitarian issues such as his Opera Fuga Perpetua (2016) whose protagonists are refugees, which is endorsed by United Nations UNHCR; and his Opera Giobbe [Job, 2018 ], commissioned by the Italian Government and the Italian the chairmanship of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) in occasion of the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of the racial laws, In which he connected the holocaust to the genocides which followed afterwards till today.
His latest sound and visual artwork is HUMAN SIGNS, a Global participatory online dance and voice artwork, conceived in time of COVID-19, with the participation of over 200 artists from over 50 countries presented digitally in MANIFESTA 13 Marseille as a part of Real Utopias exhibition; presented also as a large scale physical exhibition at Loop Festival: City Screen 2021 in Barcelona.
