Rona Yefman was born in Israel, and currently lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Columbia University in New York City in 2009 and her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 1999. She is the recipient of the Ingeborg Bachmann Scholarship established by Anselm Kiefer and awarded by the Wolf Foundation to a young Israeli artist, the Gerard Levy Prize for a young photographer from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the Lotos Club Award in New York, and the 2009 Rema Hort Mann Scholarship.

Her recent shows include: Living Room, Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Hugging & Wrestling, MoCA Cleveland, Ohio; The Girl Effect, Lombard Fried Project, New York, NY; Can Art do more? Art Focus #5, Jerusalem; Infinitu et Contini Multiplex, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Inside Out, Museum Marco, Vigo, Spain; 2 Flags, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; Hilliger Sebastian, A Splendid Readiness for Death, Kunsthalla Wien, Austria.

As an artist coming from a male dominated conflict zone, I was forced to seek freedom from the political, physical, and psychological constraints that defined my environment. In order to do this, I began to make work inspired by the anarchistic movements born of the creativity, rage, and individualism of the 1980’s.
 
I seek extreme situations and people that embody possibilities of freedom.  I am fascinated by the gap between what we are, and what we want to be. Through various media I collaborate with individuals that have formed a radical persona.  Using this intimate process, we search together for ways to awaken the body and elicit the self through the construction of characters.
 
Absurdity and abstraction are also important stylistic considerations that appear in my work, and are each an indication of something raw and authentic.
Through this work I hope to expose the humanity of my subjects, while forming notions of identity that could lead to change based on recognition and acceptance.