Him + Her: Candice Breitz

“Within any consciousness there is a Greek chorus, a mess of intertwined voices” – Candice Breitz.

Candice Breitz, born in 1972, is a South African contemporary video and photography artist. She manipulates video footage and appropriates from popular culture. She’s currently a professor in Berlin where she lives.

The following is an installation video she’s done in 2008 where she manipulates Hollywood movies picking out different characters played by Meryl Streep over the stretch of 1978 to 2008. The characters are cropped out of the movies and brought together as though in an internal conversation. “The resulting narrative [] sees the transformation of the star [] to “her” – gendered stereotypes grappling with introspective [] dialogues.” It is a curious video that sheds light on different aspects of how “She” is perceived in Hollywood movies mainly on the questions of love and marriage. We find these different women, or perhaps…