VAI Artist Talk | Candice Breitz (17 May)

Event: Artist Talk – Candice Breitz

Format: Online via zoom

Date: Tuesday 17 May, 2022

Time: 5pm – 6.30pm

Description:

Candice Breitz is a Berlin-based artist. Her moving image installations have been shown internationally. Throughout Breitz’s career, she has explored the dynamics by means of which an individual becomes him or herself in relation to a larger community, be that the immediate community that one encounters in family, or the real and imagined communities that are shaped not only by questions of national belonging, race, gender and religion, but also by the increasingly undeniable influence of mainstream media such as television, cinema and other popular culture. Most recently, Breitz’s work has focused on the conditions under which empathy is produced, reflecting on a media-saturated global culture in which strong identification with fictional characters and celebrity figures runs parallel to widespread indifference to the plight of those facing real world adversity. She is currently working on the third part of a video trilogy that focuses on the attention economy, following the first and second chapters of the trilogy—Love Story (2016) and TLDR (2017).

Breitz holds degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), the University of Chicago and Columbia University (NYC). She has participated in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Studio Program and led the Palais de Tokyo’s ‘Le Pavillon’ residency as a visiting artist during the year 2005-2006. She has been a tenured professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig since 2007.

In 2017, Breitz represented South Africa at the 57^th Venice Biennale (alongside Mohau Modisakeng). In the past, she has also participated in biennials and triennials in Johannesburg (1997), São Paulo (1998), Istanbul (1999), Taipei (2000), Gwangju (2000), Tirana (2001), Göteborg (2003 + 2009), Venice (2005), New Orleans (2008), Singapore (2011), Dakar (2014), Melbourne (2017), Cleveland (2018), Sharjah (2019), Aichi (2019), Rabat (2019) and Prague (2020). Her work has been featured at the Sundance Film Festival (New Frontier, 2009), at the Toronto International Film Festival (David Cronenberg: Transformation, 2013) and in the the Gorki Theatre’s Herbstsalon (4. Berliner Herbstsalon: De-heimatize It!, Berlin, 2019).