Candice Breitz: Profile, 2017 (Seen Here: Buhlebezwe Siwani)
We are extremely pleased to announce our forthcoming exhibition, with the renowned South African artist Candice Breitz (b. Johannesburg 1972, lives and works in Berlin), of her seminal work ‘Profile’ from 2017. This three-variation video work will be installed sequentially across the three weeks of the exhibition run. Variation A in the first week and so forth. We are particularly pleased to be working with Candice, who has been a vocal and highly visible defender of human rights, and of those who chose to speak out about the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Profile—a series of three short films that Breitz has described as ‘self-portraits’—is the artist’s response to being nominated to represent South Africa in the country’s pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. In keeping with past works such as Him + Her or The Character, Breitz’s fast-moving edit brings a slice-and-dice approach to the genre of portraiture, as it seeks to address the knotty relationship between the identity of an artist and the specificity of their practice.
Breitz’s dissection of the genre is as earnest as it is irreverent, conflating self- representation with brand promotion, biography with racial profiling, artist statement with political campaign. Rather than appearing before the camera herself, Breitz invited ten prominent South African artists—who could equally have been selected to represent South Africa in Venice—to feature in the work. Profile thus deflects the heightened attention that is typically extended to an artist exhibiting in Venice to a range of fellow artists who, much like Breitz, appear intent on disrupting fixed notions of subjectivity. Collectively, their on-camera statements prompt a series of questions regarding the dynamics of power that are at work in acts of representation, both of the self and of others. It quickly becomes apparent that the artists’ contributions cannot necessarily be taken at face value.
Introducing themselves in Breitz’s name (“My name is Candice Breitz...”), they continue to describe themselves in terms of a wide spectrum of identity markers (offering information about their race, class, gender, profession and religion). The polyphonic riff that they deliver challenges the conventional assumptions that guarantee the genre of portraiture: “I’m Candice Breitz, and I approve this message,” a variety of different voices claim, parodying the sentence that American presidential candidates are legally obliged to use as rhetorical authentication of their campaign ads during an electoral cycle. In the context of Profile, however, the sentence subverts the proof of authenticity that it is supposed to furnish. Who is here as a self and who is here as an other? Who is speaking in the name of whom?
Dodging objectification, the artists featured in Profile—in cahoots with Breitz— confront the placatory ‘rainbow nation’ metaphor that is frequently applied to post- apartheid South Africa. In doing so, they broach the question of who may legitimately speak of and for their nation. The question is a particularly fraught one in the South African context, where debates around the extent to which white South Africans can engage, portray or stand in alliance with Black compatriots, remain central to public discourse. Can would-be allies whose very being is defined by socio-historical privilege, avoid simply entrenching such privilege as they endeavour to align themselves with those who have been historically disadvantaged? This charged question, which is central to Profile, resonates loudly in other works that are documented in this catalogue, such as Extra, Love Story and TLDR. Since 2017, Breitz has frequently shown Profile at the point of entry to exhibitions of her work.
Candice Breitz: Profile, 2017 (Seen Here: Buhlebezwe Siwani)
3 single-channel videos, colour, sound, loop
Variation A – Duration: 2 minutes, 20 seconds
Variation B – Duration: 3 minutes, 27 seconds
Variation C – Duration: 3 minutes, 21 seconds
Commissioned by the South African Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2017
Open Thursday - Friday 10am - 6pm and Saturday 11am to 6pm
Also by appointment
Many thanks to Candice, Alex and Jenny at Studio Breitz, and to Mark Devenney of University of Brighton. We shall be announcing details of a talk by Mark on Candice’s work and the wider political context shortly.