Yael Malka on intimacy, relationships, and queerness
Yael Malka is an observer and researcher of human relationships and the impact of one's immediate surroundings on the formation of those relationships. Yael constructs concepts and presents new ways of interpretations that stem from her personal experiences and the deeper meaning she discovers beyond them. Yael says, “Big themes that have always been present in my work are intimacy, relationships, and queerness. These are all really complex and ever-evolving ways of connecting and being, and I’m consistently striving to get closer to understanding it all.”
Yael's photography portrays intimacy in a touching manner through characters that allow the feelings of closeness to emerge, enhanced by self-portraits that provide small glimpses into the artist's personal sphere. In her project Riis Beach, Yael draws attention to the themes of freedom and continuity, emphasizing a sense of celebration and persistence in life, building on her personal connection to the place and the experiences of people. The tenderness in the themes explored and the deep care about subjects in the frame are a leitmotif in Yael’s work that bring us closer to understanding the artist behind the lens.
Yael Malka is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY who focuses on photography and sculpting. Yael graduated with a BFA from Pratt Institute in Photography & Art History. In this interview, we speak with Yael about her visual language and how she developed her interpretation of the chosen topics into art. We discuss her book The Views (2022), where she depicts a recurring element of the city, the city panels, from a different angle, inviting the viewer to discover new thoughts and emotions. Yael describes her way of working with her sitters and her attention to the dynamics and the power the photographer may exercise when working on the project. With Riis Beach, Yael juxtaposes the underlying elements of violence with freedom to present a place that went through transformation, created from the personal experience of someone who grew up in the Bronx area.
Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski
‘I don’t believe an artist needs a traditional educational background to make intelligent or intriguing work. In terms of my educational background, being an art history minor and having been able to take liberal arts classes at Pratt Institute greatly accelerated my knowledge.’
My Narrative
You worked towards your BFA in Photography and gained a degree from Pratt Institute, NY. In what way, does classic education enable an artist to discover their voice and find themes of interest or methodology?
I don’t believe an artist needs a traditional educational background to make intelligent or intriguing work. In terms of my educational background, being an art history minor and having been able to take liberal arts classes at Pratt Institute greatly accelerated my knowledge and understanding of art and how to talk about it. Taking classes like Bad Girls in Art, Literature, and Music and Visual Culture of Violence were instrumental to the frameworks I created to understand the world around me, which inevitably made it into my work. I obtained language for how to visually and formally break down art, which helped me in creating a sense of style and aesthetics for myself. Today, I use films as my main inspiration for concepts, composition, and textures. I especially love learning from other artists.
‘That’s the work I’m most interested in making — taking something that becomes such a part of our visual landscape that it, at times, can become invisible.’
The Views
In the book, The Views (2022), published by TIS Books, you present a picture of the city and the architectural landscapes of New York. The city is depicted as a living organism that undergoes constant change with the construction and deconstruction happening, providing the city its identity. Living in New York and experiencing it as your home, seeing it welcoming and rejecting people who come and go with their aspirations, what was important for you to share from your perception of the city through the book?
I’m someone who works from a granular place of looking: taking things that blend into the background are considered maybe mundane, but I isolate and enlarge them. So many people told me when looking at The Views that they never thought about viewing panels in the way I presented them or really at all. I think that’s the work I’m most interested in making — taking something that becomes such a part of our visual landscape that it, at times, can become invisible. This work is about elevating a visual motif via repetition to invite the viewer to have another perspective or wonder and to help them notice the objects and items that make up our everyday life.
‘I am doing a 360: I’m lying on the floor, I’m on a ladder, I’m behind someone, I’m right up in their face, but in a manner where it doesn’t necessarily disrupt the moment.’
Faces, Places
The project evokes feelings of nostalgia, as if reminding the viewer of the scenes once witnessed. Even though the faces are of people we never met, the situations they are caught in, the landscapes, and the human connection to nature are relatable and close. What was the main guiding principle for organizing the project in this manner and selecting those specific images?
When I take photographs, there is an unplanned sort of choreography that goes into the physicality of my shooting process. I am doing a 360: I’m lying on the floor, I’m on a ladder, I’m behind someone, I’m right up in their face, but in a manner where it doesn’t necessarily disrupt the moment. There is a collaborative practice that happens between the photographer and sitter, but the power play is inevitable. There is something I, as the photographer, carry that is inherently hierarchical. I like to play around within that slippery territory and see how I can both create comfort with my sitter as well as an awareness of the camera. This is a hard thing to achieve, but ultimately, I think it has to do with creating an intimate connection with the person, place, or thing I’m photographing.
‘The People’s Beach speaks to tenderness, sexuality, intimacy, and resistance inside of a larger story that aims to disassemble or disrupt that.’
Riis Beach
The project you created at Riis Beach in Queens, NY, documenting the scenery and people deals with the ideas of freedom, identity, and queerness. The sense is of safety the community strives for and the urgency to ensure places like this continue to exist. What does the project mean to you on a personal level and what did you manage to learn from your connections created with people you photographed on the beach?
The summer I was heavily documenting Jacob Riis Beach was simultaneously during my biggest heartbreak. I don’t think there would have been a better time to have been given this commission. The beach and the people I met all summer long were what held me most during that difficult time. I grew up in the Bronx and have been frequenting Jacob Riis Beach for the last decade, so I have a personal connection to this place, and I felt really honored to be trusted to make this project.
Jacob Riis Beach has been known as a queer haven in Queens, NY, since the 1940s. The conditions that allowed this place to become what it is stem from its location: the undesirable periphery of the Neponsit Beach Hospital. Inhabited by two historically unwanted populations, sick and gay, this site existed as a sort of unplanned worldbuilding experiment. At its core, The People’s Beach is a time capsule that aims to capture the people who visit this beach as well as the remnants of violence, destruction, celebration, and resistance dotted along the landscape.
Through what’s washed up to shore like seaweed, dead jellyfish, shells, and foam and then retreats into the water, the ocean is a place in which the passage of time feels especially present. Sand has been eroded, reformed, and in constant movement for millennia, creating this consistent reset. Sand lends itself to a malleability, for which it has been exploited to advance projects dealing with capital and growth, but something this work questions how much nature can truly be controlled.
This tension of simultaneous addition and eradication of land is at the crux of this project. The violence at the center of the building’s slow erasure is intertwined with the uninhibited freedom and joy that beachgoers experience. The People’s Beach speaks to tenderness, sexuality, intimacy, and resistance inside of a larger story that aims to disassemble or disrupt that.
‘I'm drawn to the idea of language, not only in the linguistic sense but also in the ways people develop modes of communication through patterns of signs, symbols, and materials.’
Upcoming Projects
What theme or narrative are you researching, and what can we expect from you in the upcoming months?
I tend to gravitate to the granular aspects of things. The concepts that drive my work oscillate between concealment, intimacy, language, record keeping, and marking time. I'm drawn to the idea of language, not only in the linguistic sense but also in the ways people develop modes of communication through patterns of signs, symbols, and materials. Big themes that have always been present in my work are intimacy, relationships, and queerness. These are all really complex and ever-evolving ways of connecting and being, and I’m consistently striving to get closer to understanding it all. Through my work, I am able to become more comfortable with the uncertainty and unknown of it all. I’m currently working on a film documentary project with my friend and co-collaborator, Laurel Golio. We are making a film that explores sex work, queerness, gender, sexuality, and intimacy.
