'You're a good mother Anna.'
'You couldn't be a mother.'
'What do I have that you don't have?'
'You're Mother Earth Incarnate'

Addressing one another from separate screens, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Shirley McLaine, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep sob through a series of maternal revelations.

Meanwhile, six male actors pace up and down, playing quietly concerned fathers. 'I'm worried about her going out with the wrong kind of guy', Steve Martin admits, 'the kind of guys who only want one thing'.
'Sex, sex, sex!' Tony Danza exclaims from an adjacent screen, as the four other screen fathers twitch in silence on the other flickering screens.

This is Breitz's Mother + Father (2005), one of the artist's seminal works; a textbook demonstration, perhaps, of the manner in which visual culture parents us by repetitive role-playing and policing of gender binaries.

Since 1999, Breitz's practise has taken, as its raw material, the popular culture products of film, television and popular music. Drastically editing and re-formulating the performances of her 'involuntary actors', Breitz essentially pares down her raw material until its unconscious message is revealed.

As proves to be the case with Mother + Father, Hollywood's message frequently includes sharply defined gender binaries. In Him + Her, (1998-2008), seven plasma screens show Jack Nicholson's twenty-three roles as somewhat narcissistic, fiercely independent men, whilst Meryl Streep's seven screens display twenty eight female characters who overwhelmingly define their identities by a string of husbands, children and weddings.

The binary distinction between star and fan is another focus of Breitz's practise. Becoming (2003) sees Breitz attempting to cross the divide by miming the gestures and facial expressions of seven heroines from romantic comedies. The resulting installation, of seven dual channels, has somewhat negative connotations: a silenced Breitz is reduced to miming the idealised notions of femininity fed to her by the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz.

Elsewhere, Breitz examines the fan-star dichotomy by employing music fans to perform their hero's songs. Whilst the resulting videos and photographs might be read as a little voyeuristic, poking fun at the fanatical emulation of pop stars by their fan groups, they can also be read as an attempt to acknowledge and empower the fans. Indeed, functioning as Monuments (as the accompanying 2007 photographic series is titled) to the fan's active consumption of subculture, these works can be read to demonstrate Dick Hebdige's application of the concept of 'bricolage' to culture (1979). In Hebdige's analysis, consumers violate hegemonic positions by picking and choosing which subcultural elements to adopt. Indeed, the sheer variety of appearances among fans within the Monuments series points to an active process of self-definition, rather than a passive one. Rather like Breitz, who samples only those filmic moments which best serve her purpose, the Monuments series suggests the possibility of engaging with popular culture without losing one's own identity.

'As a visual artist, there is no point in imagining an escape from the nondescript cultural landscape that has been mapped for us by Hollywood, MTV and CNN. Rather, it is necessary to invade the operating system that designed that landscape ' to inject oneself into the mainstream media as a viral presence. We have no choice ' if we live in large urban centres ' but to consume the cultural produce of global capitalism. But consumption must be followed by digestion, and digestion must be followed by excretion. This is a polite way of saying that if we have no choice but to consume what the mass media feeds us, then we must insist on completing the digestive cycle ' we must insist on the right to chew up, process and regurgitate mass media forms such that they might service us rather than merely milking us.'
(Breitz 2005, in conversation with Nicholas Chambers)

On the ubiquity of visual culture as a language worldwide:
'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 linguist and national differences. The quest of ground zero is as evident in reduction of visual languages by artists such as Mondrian or Rodchencko, as it is in the sound and language experiments of artists ranging from Marinetti to Khlebnikov' There is a dark possibility that insatiable consumerism may be the only lingua franca that is available to us at this point.'
(Breitz 2003, quoted in Allen, J)

'If Mother + Father depict the 'involuntary acting' of stars, then do the monuments portray their fans as unwitting marionettes of the entertainment industry? In other words, do these photographs expose a slavish conformity to mainstream stereotypes, or alternatively, and more provocatively, might Breitz's art somehow disclose the creative and individualising potential of consumerism?'
T J Demos 2007

'Perhaps out of necessity, Breitz has developed something of a split artistic consciouness, in which the ecstatic fan and the detached critic co-exist. It is ultimately her submission to the dream world of global mass culture that position her to successfully lay bare some of the mechanisms of its attraction. It is the same submission that enables her to devise, with diabolical versatility, installations that partially shatter its spell.'
Christopher Philips 2001

'Far from lamenting the situation' Breitz fully embraces pop culture as the dominant mimetic object. Instead of simply allowing herself to be poured into the mould, she takes the role of an active consumer, transforming and deforming pop cultural products even as she grants them more airtime. Often, the artist's interventions have the eerie feel of historical documents that chart the rise of pop culture.'
Jennifer Allen 2003

Currently, Breitz is working on a commissioned work for the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, opening in September. She is simultaneously conducting research for another work that will be commissioned by the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, USA.

MOST RECENTLY

In late 2008, Breitz was the first artist to occupy the Temporaere Kunsthalle, a temporary art space in Berlin. The show, Inner + Outer Space, included Breitz's collaborations with the fans of popular music Working Class Hero (A Portrait of John Lennon), King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson) and Queen (A Portrait of Madonna) , as well as Him + Her (2008).

In 2007, Breitz was the winner of the coveted Prix d'Art Contemporain Fondation Pierre de Monaco, an annual prize to a contemporary artist under the age of 35.

In 2005, Breitz produced King (a portrait of Michael Jackson) and Queen(a portrait of Madonna), another popular culture binary which set Jackson and Madonna off against each other as contemporary monarchs vying for power, albeit through the re-enactions of their songs by fans.

Prior to her first visit to Japan in 2002, Breitz prepared to make Aiwa to Zen, writing down all the Japanese words she could think of. The resulting list of 150 odd words provided an overwhelmingly exotic picture of Japan, including well known Japanese cultural exports such as 'karaoke', 'bonsai', 'sushi', 'Suzuki' and 'origami'. In a playful work, Breitz then employed Japanese speakers to act out a story using only her stunted vocabulary. The resultant tale of misunderstandings is both farcical and sad; the Japanese actors regressing to the nonsense language of children with phrases such as 'origami origami origami pikachu Mitsubishi!'.

In an earlier investigation of the divisive, infantalising effects of language difference, Breitz produced The Babel Series in 1999. Comprising brief moments of footage from music videos by Madonna, Wham, Grace Jones, Queen, Prince, Abba and the Police, the seven loops create a cacophony of monosyllabic baby talk. Madonna is fixated on the syllable 'pa', from 'Papa Don't Preach', while Freddie Mercury cries out 'ma ma ma ma' again and again.

In an interview conducted by Spanish contemporary art museum, Musac, Breitz situates this understanding of language in the context of her experiences growing up in South Africa unable to speak the language of most of her compatriots.

'As a child, I became accustomed to thinking of language as something opaque and somehow violent, the thing that kept people apart, rather than a transparent bridge across which one might negotiate difference.' (Breitz in conversation with Musac 2007 online)

The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto will host Breitz's solo show in September 2009. Also upcoming is a solo show at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria.

Breitz will also be travelling to Mumbai and Lagos for another project that will go into production in 2010.

Born in Johannesburg, 1972.
Professor of Fine Art at the Braunschweig University of Art since 2007.

Education
1998 - 2002 Doctoral Candidate in Art History - Columbia University (New York)
1997 Whitney Independent Studio Program ' Whitney Museum (New York)
1997 M.Phil. Art History - Columbia University (New York)
1995 M.A. Art History ' University of Chicago (Chicago)
1993 B.A. (Fine Arts) - University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg)
Solo Exhibitions

2009 Yvon Lambert (New York)
The Power Plant Toronto (Toronto)
SF Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco)
2008 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebaek)
Collection Lambert en Avignon (Avignon)
Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg)
Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (Berlin)

2007 MUSAC ' Museo de Arte Contempor'neo de Castilla y Le'n (Le'n)
White Cube (London)
Prix International d'Art Contemporain 2007 (Monaco)
Vox Contemporary Image (Montreal)

2006 Konstmuseum Uppsala (Uppsala)
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead)
Hellenic American Union (Athens)
Kukje Gallery (Seoul)
Bawag Foundation (Vienna)

2005 Castello di Rivoli (Turin)
Palais de Tokyo (Paris)
White Cube (London)
Sonnabend Gallery (New York)
Edith-Russ-Haus f'r Medienkunst (Oldenburg)
Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art (Toronto)
Bob Marley Museum (Kingston)
Das Schiff (Basel)

2004 Sonnabend Gallery (New York)
Moderna Museet (Stockholm)
FACT / Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (Liverpool)
Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo)
Galleri Roger Bj'rkholmen (Stockholm)

2003 Modern Art Oxford (Oxford)
Galerie Max Hetzler (Berlin)
aspreyjacques (London)
De Beeldbank (Eindhoven)
Goethe Institute (Zagreb)

2002 Artpace San Antonio (Texas)
INOVA Institute of Visual Arts (Milwaukee) br> Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin)
Museum Folkwang / RWE-Turm (Essen)
Miami Basel Statements (Miami)

2001 De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam)
O.K Center for Contemporary Art Upper Austria (Linz)
Kunstverein St. Gallen Kunstmuseum (St. Gallen)
Galerie Johnen & Schöttle (Cologne)
Galleri Roger Björkholmen (Stockholm)
Galeria João Gra'a (Lisbon)
Galleria Francesca Kaufmann (Milan)

2000 Centre d'Art Contemporain Gen've (Geneva)
New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York)
Galerie Art + Public (Geneva)
Galerie R'diger Sch'ttle (Munich)
Galleria Francesca Kaufmann (Milan)
Chicago Project Room (Chicago)
Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf (Wiepersdorf)

1999 Galerie R'diger Sch'ttle (Munich)
Galleri Roger Bj'rkholmen (Stockholm)

1998 Galerie Johnen & Sch'ttle (Cologne)
Sala Mendoza (Caracas)
Chicago Project Room (Chicago)
Galleri Roger Bj'rkholmen (Stockholm)

1997 Craig Krull Gallery (Los Angeles)
Silverstein Gallery (New York)
Galerie R'diger Sch'ttle (Munich)

1996 The Space Gallery - The Rainbow Show (Johannesburg)

1995 Cochrane Woods Art Center - Tourist Works (Chicago)

1994 Institute of Contemporary Art - Serial Corpses (Johannesburg)

Breitz's work has also appeared on numerous group exhibitions, notably the 2009 G'teborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art in Sweden, the 2008 The New Orleans Biennale, the 2005 Venice Biennale, the 11th Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement in Geneva. Her work also appeared on 2005's Kassel Documentary, Film and Video Festival, 2004's Art 35 Basel, the 2003 G'teborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, in Sweden, the 8th Baltic Triennial of International Art, in 2002, in Vilnius, Tirana Biennale 2001 in Tirana, the 19th Kassel Documentary, Film and Video Festival in Kassel, Taipei Biennale 2000, in Taipei Kwangju Biennale Korea 2000, in 1999 on 6th International Istanbul Biennial, and 1997's Johannesburg Biennale.

REFERENCES

Allen, J. 2003. 'Candice Breitz: From A to B and Beyond' in: Cotter, Suzanne (editor). Candice Breitz: Re-Animations. Oxford: Modern Art Oxford

Allen, J 2008 . 'Jack and Meryl on the Couch' in: Rosenberg, Angela (editor). Candice Breitz / Inner + Outer Space. Berlin: Temporaere Kunsthalle Berlin

Demos, T.J.. 2007 '(In)voluntary Acting: The Art of Candice Breitz,' in Demos, T.J. Mother + Father / Monuments. Monaco: Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation 41e Prix International d'Art Contemporain, exhibition catalogue

Nicholas Chambers 2005. 'Candice Breitz: Mother + Father ' Interview with Nicholas Chambers' in: Artlines 2. 12-15

Candice Breitz in conversation with Musac 2007. Interview with Candice Breitz. [online] Available: http://musac.es/archivos/1168521506entrev_candice_eng.pdf. Last accessed: May 1, 2009

Hebdige, D. 2008. Subculture: The Meaning of Style Cultural Studies: An Anthology. Ed. Michael Ryan.