Candice Breitz (*1972 in Johannesburg, lives in Berlin) is a fluent chronicler of the contradictions that haunt popular discourses. Her interest is directed at the dynamics involved in the formation of familiar identities, which she explores through complex video productions, often incorporating mass media images, such as photographs, video clips, and Hollywood films. The Matrix, a photograph of a placenta, was created in the course of her work on the video series Labour, which premiered in 2019 at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Labour presents a series of births captured on video, shot by the artist in a raw documentary style. The videos are framed by a fictional “matricial decree,” in which Breitz re-imagines the physical strength that flows through mothers at the moment of giving birth as a resource that can be tapped for other purposes – such as the elimination of authoritarian leaders who have rescinded reproductive rights or done harm to the bodily autonomy of women and others.

Candice Breitz has been a professor at the University of Fine Arts Braunschweig since 2007. Recent exhibitions of her work include at: Kunstmuseum Bonn (2020); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2019); Sharjah Biennale (2019); Boston Museum of Fine Arts (2018); South African Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2017); Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2016); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2013); Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2012); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2010); The Power Plant, Toronto (2009); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2008).