Visiting Artist Lecture: Candice Breitz

Candice Breitz (born in Johannesburg, 1972) is a Berlin-based artist. Most recently, her 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. Following the completion of her works 'Love Story' (2016) and 'TLDR' (2017), she is currently working on the third part of a video trilogy that critically probes the attention economy.

This talk will focus on the artist’s most recent work, 'Whiteface' (2022). Over recent years, Breitz has collected a wide range of found footage fragments that document ‘white people talking about race.’ Her archive includes the voices of political figures, news anchors and talk show hosts, as well as those of anonymous YouTube bloggers; covering white perspectives that run the gamut from neo-Nazi ideology and far right propaganda to everyday racism and the posturing of ‘good white people.’ Specifically, the archive observes the rising anxiety of white people as calls to dismantle white supremacy proliferate and intensify across the globe. As such, it offers insight into the ongoing backlash against anti-racist movements, as white people struggle to come to terms with public discourse that highlights phenomena such as ‘white privilege,’ ‘white fragility,’ ‘white rage’ and ‘white guilt.’

In 'Whiteface' Breitz appropriates and ventriloquizes dozens of voices drawn from this archive, channelling them through her own white body. Wearing nothing but a white dress shirt and zombie contact lenses, the artist conjures up whiteness in a variety of its guises, rotating through a series of cheap blonde wigs as the work unfolds, among which her own platinum head of hair is featured. Dislocated from the white people who originally uttered them, the words that stream through Breitz accumulate to provide a critical survey of the language via which whiteness frames, normalises and leverages its power.

Breitz’s deliberately theatrical performance in 'Whiteface' draws attention to the constructed nature of whiteness and other racial categories. Her bleached presence and deadened eyes locate the fictions that naturalise and perpetuate white supremacy squarely within the genre of horror.

https://www.candicebreitz.net/

Room #

https://ufl.zoom.us/j/91249022710?pwd=aVlvYmVCbVBTQlpDU3N5b3R3SzJEQT09

Address