BMA Responds to Global Pandemic by Making Exhibition of Major Works by Acclaimed Artist Candice Breitz Accessible on Newly Developed Website

Presented side-by-side for the first time, both TLDR and Love Story examine how our contemporary obsession with celebrity and the explosion of media have distorted our ability to connect with real-world humanitarian issues and empathize with the experiences of those living on the margins of society. The versions of these works presented online include nearly 30 hours of content that captures Breitz’s essential voice as an artist and interrogator of contemporary culture.

In the two-part multichannel video TLDR (2017), Breitz collaborated with a community of sex workers in Cape Town, South Africa, to tell their stories and capture the bitter, often misplaced, cultural debates surrounding sex work and the rights of those working in the trade. The first video features a 12-year-old narrator telling the story of a clash between Amnesty International, which began advocating for the global decriminalization of sex work in 2015, and a coalition of Hollywood celebrities and sex work abolitionists. A modern Greek chorus of sex workers animates the narration through dance movements and the use of protest signs. The story is also accompanied by a soundtrack rich in protest songs and emoji-inflected digital imagery, drawing on the alluring visual tactics employed by the Internet.

This stylized presentation is followed online by 10 intimate interviews that capture the real-life struggle of sex workers to attain basic human rights. Through this intense juxtaposition, Breitz highlights the incredible ability of celebrities to assert power in a dialogue in which they have no experience or study, thus distorting the public conversation and leaving those most affected to deal with the ramifications. The title is the acronym for “too long; didn’t read,” and references our limited capacity to engage with complicated and layered subject matter—choosing instead to absorb only short-form and glossed-over information.

Love Story (2016) features two distinct presentations of the experiences of six individuals deeply impacted by the global refugee crisis. In the first version, actors Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore, each seated in front of a green screen, perform a series of fragments excerpted from a set of first-person accounts, totaling approximately 74 minutes. The second iteration includes nearly 20 hours of interviews with four of the six subjects: José Maria João, a former child soldier from Angola; Professor Luis Nava, a political dissident from Venezuela; Farah Abdi Mohamed, a young atheist from Somalia; and Sarah Ezzat Mardini, a young woman who escaped war-torn Syria.

Candice Breitz (b. 1972, South Africa) is an acclaimed Berlin-based artist whose moving-image installations have been shown internationally. Breitz’s work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (Germany); National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Palais de Tokyo (Paris); The Power Plant (Toronto); Moderna Museet (Stockholm); White Cube (London); Wexner Center for the Arts (Ohio); ACMI / The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne); and the South African National Gallery (Cape Town). Breitz’s work has also been included in many group exhibitions and biennales around the world. Additionally, her work has also been featured at the Sundance Film Festival (New Frontier, 2009) and the Toronto International Film Festival (David Cronenberg: Transformation, 2013). Among the many museum collections with Breitz’s works are the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (both in New York); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Munich, Germany); Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto); FNAC / Fonds national d’art contemporain (France); M+ / Museum of Visual Culture (Hong Kong); National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne); MONA / Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania, Australia); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston); and MAXXI / Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (Rome, Italy). Breitz holds degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), the University of Chicago, and

Columbia University (NY) and has participated in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Studio Program and led the Palais de Tokyo’s Le Pavillon residency as a visiting artist in 2005–2006. She has been a tenured professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig since 2007.