Inferno

Building utopia in Brazil with the Israeli artist.
Yael Bartana opens her latest show at Petzel Gallery in Manhattan with “Inferno,” a provocative, cinematic epic set in Brazil. The somewhat excessive Temple of Solomon in São Paulo is her protagonist, built as an exact replica of its ancient namesake by the evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in the summer of 2014 to the tune of $300million. Inferno shows a utopian band of followers, bedecked with fruit and flowers, emerging from the city and flocking to the newly constructed building as helicopters delivering sacred relics of the Jewish faith fly overhead.