Yuval Yairi

Yuval Yairi (born 1961) is a contemporary Israeli multimedia artist whose work spans photography and video, exploring sites charged with historical, cultural, or political resonance—often entwined with his own memory. Born in Israel, he graduated in 1988 from the Visual Communications department of WIZO Haifa Academy of Design and Education. From 1988 to 1999, he directed a Jerusalem design studio, producing and directing short films and documentaries.

Since 2004, Yairi has focused primarily on photographic and video projects that transform everyday locations—a leper hospital, an abandoned Arab village, a writer’s library, a hotel room, a museum under renovation—into meticulously composed tableaux. Through layering, deconstruction, and recomposition of space, time, and event, his images reveal unseen narratives and challenge our perceptions of place.

Yairi’s work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals around the world—including New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Kolkata—and is held in both public and private collections. In 2017 he received Israel’s Ministry of Culture Award for Visual Arts. Through his distinctive aesthetic, Yuval Yairi invites viewers to reconsider the interplay between memory, history, and the built environment.