Yishay Garbasz

Yishay Garbasz (; 1970, Israel – March 2026, Berlin ) was an interdisciplinary artist who worked in the fields of photography, performance and installation. Her main field of interest was trauma and the inheritance of post-traumatic memory. She also worked on issues of identity and the invisibility of transgender women.

She studied photography with Stephen Shore at Bard College between 2000 and 2004.

Garbasz received the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship in 2004/2005. She had lived in Berlin since 2005, and had also lived in Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Israel, The United States and England.

Despite having suffered epoxy poisoning in 2014, from which she developed occupational asthma and chronic lung problems, she was also Germany's first trans woman triathlete. Garbasz learned to write at the age of 25 at Landmark College. She was openly lesbian.

Notable works 2004–2009

In her piece In my Mother's Footsteps the artist explores her inherited traumatic memories from her mother's Holocaust experiences. For the project, the artist visited every single place her mother's life touched during that period. The project consisted of an exhibition (Tokyo Wonder Site, 2009, Wako Works of Art, 2009, and Busan Biennale 2010 ) and a book. This book was nominated for the German photo book prize in 2009. That project was also a flip book published in 2010 by Mark Batty Publisher. The project was also included in the Busan Biennale 2010. She was awarded the Berlin Woman Filmmaker of the Year award for this.

2010

In "Eat Me Damien," Garbasz looks and pokes fun at the predatory practices of both the art world and world commerce. In this work the artist puts her testicles removed during gender clarification surgery in a fish tank with formaldehyde, reminiscent of Damien Hirst's shark. Shown at Seven at Miami Art Fair. Garbasz had stated that she always planned to use the genitals in some way, and that this particular idea won out due to its title.

2014

Ritual and Reality explores the trauma from the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima. Color photographs and videos (each a 9 to 12 minute single take) are accompanied by an audio guide that describes Garbasz's three-week journey through the Fukushima exclusion zone in 2013 as well as the more general consequences of the nuclear disaster.

2015

Severed Connections: Do what I say or they will kill you is an exploration of how fences as physical barriers create fear that allows governments to manipulate their people. This work was exhibited at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York in 2015. In an interview Garbasz said that the fences are about "othering" and that "the less contact you have, the easier it is to make the other a monster", hearkening back to her personal struggles as a trans woman.