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How might artists carve out agency – both in their creative practice and their public advocacy – as modes of censorship become increasingly prevalent across self-described democracies?

This Artist’s talk & Conversation with internationally acclaimed Candice Breitz (b. 1972, Johannesburg, South Africa), looks at recent work, to explore how mainstream media shape our identities and influence our empathy (or lack thereof) for real-world issues. Breitz will discuss her multi-channel installation TLDR, which was made in long-term collaboration with a community of precarious sex workers in the city of Cape Town and is the sequel to Love Story, recently exhibited at Rua Red in Tallaght. TLDR addresses the often-fraught relationship between art and activism, to ask how artists living privileged lives can succeed in amplifying calls for social justice and meaningfully representing marginalised communities.

Breitz’s Artist Talk is followed by a Conversation, moderated by Brian Hand, Head of Sculpture at NCAD. This looks at the agency of art, activism, voice, community and global solidarity, to address how artists and activists can navigate a world saturated with information, misinformation and state ideology vis-à-vis Israel-Palestine. The conversation invites deeper reflection on Breitz’s recent experience of an exhibition cancellation in Germany.


About Speakers

Candice Breitz
Candice Breitz (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. Breitz recently completed her ‘White Noise Trilogy,’ which she has been working on since 2015. The trilogy includes her multi-channel video installations Love Story (2016), TLDR (2017) and Whiteface (2022).

Solo exhibitions of Breitz’s works have been hosted by Tate Liverpool, the Museum Folkwang, Kunstmuseum Bonn, the National Gallery of Canada, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Kunsthaus Bregenz, MUSAC / Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, MUDAM Luxembourg, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, The Power Plant, Boston’s Museum of Fine Art and the Castello di Rivoli, among other institutions. In 2017, she represented South Africa at the 57th Venice Biennale, alongside Mohau Modisakeng. Her work is represented in the collections of MoMA and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (both in New York), Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Canada, the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk), M+ (Hong Kong), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Fonds national d’art contemporain (France), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) and MAXXI (Rome), among other museums. More details here

Brian Hand (Moderator)
Brian Hand, Lecturer and Head of Sculpture and Expanded Practice Department, at NCAD. Brian Hand’s art practice is broadly concerned with creatively exploring and researching events in the past. Brian makes temporary public work and time-based installations often in site-specific locations. Brian has a deep interest in post-colonial historiography and the limits of historical representation. In the past, he believes, we can find alternative images that disrupt the naturalness of the present. He has made work addressing art and politics through researching secret societies, prisons, suffragettes, the archive, the great famine and the invention of the Irish Wolfhound. Brian Hand is an artist based in the Blackstairs Mountains in Co. Carlow. He studied Sculpture at NCAD and Media at the Slade School of Art, London. He was artist-in residence at Kilmainham Gaol Museum (1990) and part of the original project team for the Famine Museum in Strokestown, Co. Roscommon. (1990-94). In 1995, he was awarded a PS1 International Studio bursary and in 1999 a critical writing bursary from the Arts Council. In 2003, Hand was selected as curator of the Arts Council’s Critical Voices programme. Hand has exhibited widely and made many temporary public works and time-based installations often in site-responsive ways. More details here