Sunday, March 15, 2015

Artist Presentation: Aisyah

Candice Breitz


     Candice Breitz is a South African artist who works primarily in video and photography. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1972 and is now based in Berlin. She has been a Professor of Fine Art at the Braunschweig University of Art since 2007, and is represented by White Cube (London), Kaufmann Repetto (Milan), and the Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg and Cape Town).

     In 1993, Breitz received her B.A. degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She then got her M.A. in Art History at the University of Chicago in 1995. Then, in 1997 she did an independent studio program at the Whitney Museum (New York) and received her M.Phil. in Art History at Columbia University (New York). In 1998-2002 she also did her Doctoral Candidate in Art History at Columbia University.

Residencies/Stipends:
  • 2000   Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf (Wiepersdorf)
  • 2001   O.K Centrum für Gegenwartskunst Oberösterreich (Linz)
  • 2002   Artpace International Artist-in-Residence Program (San Antonio)
  • 2002   Künstlerhaus Bethanien International Artists in Residency Program (Berlin)
  • 2003   IASPIS International Artists' Studio Program (Stockholm)
  • 2005   Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris)
  • 2006   Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead)
  • 2013   OCAD Residency: Nomadic Residents, Ontario College of Art & Design (Toronto)
     The most prominent theme amongst Breitz's pieces is her exploration of the identity production through the circuits of mass media: "I think of myself a little bit as a “translator”. I’m very interested in the cultures in which we grow up, the countries in which we grow up, the political system, the social system, the family system. I’m very interested in how we are shaped and sculpted by the very particular ingredients that make us who we are." (Goodman Gallery, 2012). In some of her videos, she would either interview her subjects (Factum series), use found footages from movies (Soliloquy series, Treatment, Her & Him, etc.) or stage/script a performance (The Woods trilogy, A Portrait of... series, etc.)

     Breitz's work can be found in the collections of Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Museum of Modern Art (New York) and Fonds National D'Art Contemporian (Puteaux, France). Over the past few decades, she has had a steady rise in international recognition — she has had solo exhibitions since 1994, as well as group exhibitions since 1995, and they've been exhibited in many places including America, Japan, Australia, Italy, England, Holland, and many more (list can be found here).

     One of her earliest work was the Factum series (2010). Breitz conducted intensive interviews with seven pairs of identical twins and a single set of triplets in and around Toronto during the summer of 2009. (Link to the series is: https://vimeo.com/album/259786).
     The most recent work she did is Treatment (2013). Here, she took three key scenes from The Brood (1979), a film that David Cronenberg often described as his version of KRAMER VS. KRAMER (also released in 1979). The piece explores the emotional strain experienced by a couple (in The Brood) as their marriage disintegrates and ensues a custody battle for their five-year-old daughter, Candice.
(Link to the piece is: https://vimeo.com/album/2534445/video/80470221).
     Although Breitz does not have a lot of artworks, the evolution of her pieces is still apparent. In her earliest days, she opted to interview identical twins (and triplets) to show how apparent each individual's voices, attitudes, body languages and views on the world are, no matter how identical each set of twins (or triplets) look. As she progressed through the years, she started becoming more interested in using found footages from movies (i.e. Hollywood films) to tackle/explore identity production.

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