Yael's work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to various educational venues. Her work has also been purchased by several universities. Yael's past film and video work has dealt with issues of identity, authority and family structures, while at the same time addressing the fragmentary nature of memory and belonging. More recent work focuses on activist initiatives, political fear, apocalypse and gender. The work most often involves non-linear and hybrid forms, including dramatized and fictional elements combined with first person narration, autobiographical and documentary perspectives.
Fresh Blood, A Consideration of Belonging dealt specifically with the many intersections of identity, including its racialized aspects within Jewish culture, and centred around a 'return' journey to Israel and to her mother's Iraqi culture. A follow up piece, In the Middle of the Street, is a documentation of peace actions in Israel/Palestine. Yael has recently released Palestine Trilogy, three videos that focus on activist initiatives, addressing the politics of Palestine and Israel through varying approaches: Deir Yassin Remembered, 28 minutes, considers the pivotal repercussions of the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948 resulting in Palestinian dispossession; Even in the Desert, a 33 minute documentation, focuses on several sites of solidarity work in Palestine/Israel; a hot sandfilled wind, a 13 minute trilingual poetic piece, visually acknowledges that mutual recognition is the only basis for hope.
Other videos include Seldom, Is Dad Dead Yet, and My Mother is a Dangerous Woman. Past installation works such as Home Rule and Bomb Shelters have exhibited with the Spontaneous Combustion Collective; You are Here was shown at the Images Festival of Independent Film and Video.Offering, a video projection dealing with fear, was exhibited at the Koffler Gallery as part of DIG/DUG; this was expanded into the fear series, in which three further images were projected as part of the Contained Mobility show at Harbourfront's York Quay Gallery.
In collaboration with Johanna Householder, Yael has produced Approximations, a series of short works examining filmic representations of gender. The first, titled The Mission, is a shot for shot recreation - edited in camera - of the opening scene of Francis Coppola’s 1979 landmark, Apocalypse Now. The Mission is a comedic piece which calls into question the gendering of redemption. A second piece in the Approximations series is, December 31, 2000, based on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. December 31, 2000 is an ironic and humourous reversal of domesticity and of a gendered apocalypse, pointing to the failure of the future. The latest piece, VERBATIM, recreates the opening scene of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, with shot-for-shot faithfulness.
She has also produced work as part of various artist projects: (of)fences, in response to the Quebec Summit of the Americas is part of the blahblahblah (Re)viewing Quebec artist project;Triskaidekaphobia, commissioned by Inside/Out, focuses on conversations with her son about phobias, theories of sexuality, and mothers; and pacts is a short web based piece pointing to the failure of peace negotiations produced for The Olive Project.
In addition, Yael has worked in the sphere of independent film and video since the mid 1980’s.
As a past Coordinator of Programming at the Images Festival of Independent Film and Video, Yael was involved in the development of that festival in its first years; she also developed workshops and selected programming at Trinity Square Video.
Yael has sat on the Boards of Northern Visions (Images festival) and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; she had also served on the Steering Committee of the Centre for Media and Culture in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She has worked on programming committees, such as A Space Gallery and the Euclid Theatre, and has sat on many arts council juries.
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