Lot 156: CANDICE BREITZ

Babel Mirrors (Grace Jones, Wham, Prince, The Police, Abba, Queen, Madonna)
Signed, titled, dated “C Breitz 2000” and numbered of eight on the reverse of each panel. This work is an artist’s proof from an edition of eight artist’s proofs.

12 3/8 x 70 5/8 in. (31.4 x 179.4 cm) each.

<br>Video stills on polystyrene mirror in seven parts.

2000

Art & Public, Geneva

For me the most provocative tale dealing with the origin of multiple languages is the biblical story of the ‘Tower of
Babel’, in which God punishes man for his vanity and grandiosity precisely by violently denying him the ability to
understand the languages of others. When I made the ‘Babel Series’ installation in 1999, this violent failure, the failure
of language to function as the glue coalescing different cultures (which is still the case now as much as it was then),
became a compelling point of reference for me.
Many Key Members of the twentieth-century avant-garde were preoccupied with the possibility of a universal language
that might communicate above and beyond the specificity of linguistic and national references…With the ‘Babel Series’
I wanted to make a work that would pay homage to such endeavors while at the same time recognizing the extent to
which any notion of pure language has become increasingly hard to maintain…The most primal units of language are
regurgitated by the ambassadors of MTV, this being a medium which has succeeded—beyond the wildest dreams of
the twentieth-century avant-garde—in forging a language that is accessible to people from vastly different contexts.
Candice Breitz in an interview with Rosanne Altstatt, ‘Killing Me Softly…An Interview with Candice Breitz,’
Kunst-Bulletin, No. 6: June, 2001