Ruth Patir is a multimedia artist and filmmaker who breathes new life into historical and archeological notions and symbols of femininity by adapting them to digital mediums and creating images and documentaries that reflect on broader issues of gender paradigms, technology, and the aesthetics of power.

The day she arrived in Miami, Ruth received a call that many artists spend their entire lives waiting for. She was selected to represent her home country of Israel in the 2024 Venice Biennale. 

Over the following weeks, the Tel Aviv-based artist spent most mornings on calls preparing for this seminal moment in her career. However, a few months after leaving Miami, given the horrific war that erupted between Israel and Hamas, the future of her dream project is now uncertain. 

“In Miami, I got—unfortunately—a very short-lived moment of basking in the sun of the nomination, of walking in the room and feeling like I was a force to be reckoned with,” Ruth said. “Now there’s just genuine fear and confusion. I’m working as if I were participating, but I guess if it comes down to a genuine threat to our lives, I will probably bow out,” she added. 

Ruth’s work frequently mines her personal experience to address urgent collective matters. For example, to create her 3D film Mary, Fuck, Kill (2019), the artist animated ancient Israelite female figurines satirically placed in modern settings. In the piece, the symbolically charged figures engage in an amusing and intimate conversation about varying feminist perspectives, echoing real-life interactions between Ruth and her mother. In Petach Tikva (2020), Ruth also used this technology to reflect on the subject of invasion. In this work, she animates sculptures of Canaanite fertility deities ironically placed within a waiting room at a fertility clinic while the characters encounter the news of wild animals (also depicted as Canaanite sculptures) invading large cities.