her solo exhibition ‘Whiteface’, white South African artist Candice Breitz has brought together numerous examples of so-called ‘white fragility’, a range of emotional defense mechanisms that deny the reality of the harmful consequences of whiteness . Among the works on display was Additional, 2011, which consists of a single-channel video installation, arranged in a sort of living room setting, and a group of photographs. On a movie set, an extra is an actor whose job is to fill in the background of a scene. While making the video, Breitz herself became an extra in the popular South African soap opera Generations, which features a predominantly black cast. The series, produced by black writer Mfundi Vundla, first aired in 1994, marking the political and social changes that followed South Africa’s first democratic elections. Like an extraterrestrial body invisible to the other characters, Breitz appears ghostly in various scenes of Generationssymbol of how white people conceal their privileges and stoke fear of their disappearance in post-apartheid society.
white face, 2022, is also the title of Breitz’s most recent video installation. As in an echo chamber, his video amplifies the defensive reflexes of white people against the recognition of the effects of structural racism. In quick succession, we hear short audio clips of disturbing statements from the media and social networks. We hear the voices of television personalities, such as Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson, preacher and broadcaster Pat Robertson, British-based American writer Lionel Shriver and Canadian alt-right YouTuber Lauren Southern. These voices obscure the benefits of white privilege by presenting them as rooted solely in individual achievement. For example, O’Reilly, the former main anchor of Fox News, insists, “Listen, you and I are lucky. We created it. We have worked hard. We hear white people described as victims of “reverse racism” and even as targets of planned genocide. These mutually reinforcing views are interrupted by opposing voices, such as those of Cenk Uygur, co-founder and main anchor of the left-wing news web talk show. Young Turksand writer Robin DiAngelo, who popularized the phrase “white fragility” and who asks, “What does it mean to be white?” »
However, we don’t see any of these characters. Instead, the thirty-five minute video shows the artist syncing up all the different voices. She takes on different characters, but they look alike. Each character wears a white shirt and grayish opaque contact lenses that make their look zombie. Only their hairstyles differ. In the dazzling studio light that levels out all the contours of the space, Breitz muffles the sound clips and adapts his facial expressions and gestures to the successive statements whose recurring phrases and exclamations determine the rhythm and rhythmic refrains of the video.
In a separate group of films, all titled white mantras, 2022, Breitz turned some of those voices speaking racist dogma into short loops. Each of the seven videos features a different character speaking and was presented in its own room. Polarizing worldviews thus stretched eerily into the depths of the exhibition space, like whiteness itself, which sees itself as invisible and colorless, yet is omnipresent. In all of these works, Breitz develops his practice of “critical whiteness” through an aesthetic of the strange and the grotesque.
