Artist: Cécile B. Evans
Exhibition title: Working on What the Heart Wants
Venue: Lira, Rome, Italy
Date: May 6 – June 25, 2016
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Lira, Rome
Lira Gallery is happy to announce a solo exhibition with a livestreamed video installation by Cécile B. Evans.*
In her work Cécile B. Evans examines the value of emotion in contemporary society and the increasing infuence of new technologies on how we feel and act. Evans employs installation, video, sculpture, online platforms and performance to address how person-to-machine exchanges refect the wider contemporary human condition.
Evans’ recent works, AGNES (2014) and Hyperlinks or It Didn’t Happen (2014) addressed the lives of digital beings and our relationship to them. Her latest work What the Heart Wants builds on these ideas to consider how these blurred relations, and the mechanisms underlying them, might effect our idea of humanity. Set in the future, centered around a new system called HYPER, it imagines what it means to be ‘a person’.
Working on What the Heart Wants live-streams the production of this world as it is being built. Through three screens connected to specially programmed computers, the visitor is exposed to the network of individuals from around the world helping to build the system itself. As tests and previews of the locations and characters for Evans’ upcoming installation ‚What the Heart Wants‘ are completed, they are uploaded to the computers along with chat conversations that led to them – giving viewers an intimate look at the work’s interior life before it is premiered at this year’s 9th Berlin Biennale.
The playlist in the exhibition is made up of tracks listened to while working on “What the Heart Wants” and was contributed to by the freelancers, animators, renderers, compositors and co-workers for the project.
* originally commissioned by the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Cécile B. Evans is a Belgian American artist based in London. She is the 2012 recipient of the Emdash Award (now Frieze Award) and the 2013 recipient of the Push Your Art Prize, resulting in the commission of a new video work for the Palais de Tokyo (Paris). She is the creator of AGNES, the first digital commission for the Serpentine Galleries (curated by Ben Vickers), a project which has grown internationally across platforms. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Winterthur (CH), De Hallen Amsterdam (NL), and the Kunsthal Aarhus (DK). In 2016 she will be participating at the 9th Berlin Biennale (DE). Current and recent exhibitions include MOCA Cleveland (US), Bielefelder Kunstverein (solo, DE), Sydney Biennale (AU), Kunsthalle Wien (AT). In 2014 she had a solo exhibition at Seventeen Gallery (London) and was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize (PinchukArtCentre, Kiev). She is a 2015 recipient of an Andaz Award. Group exhibitions include Inhuman, at Fridericianum (Kassel), TTTT at Jerwood Visual Arts Foundation (London), La Voix Humaine at Kunstverein Munich, Phantom Limbs at Pilar Corrias Gallery (London), and CO-WORKERS at Musée d’art Moderne (Paris). Recent screenings include the ICA London, V&A (London), BFI (London), and New York Film Festival. A number of grants and residencies have supported her work, such as Wysing Arts Centre (UK), CCA Andratx (SP), and the Arts Council England and recent symposiums include ICA Salon London, Art Basel Conversations, Global Art Forum, and Rhizome’s Seven on Seven.
Cécile B. Evans, Working on What the Heart Wants, 2015-ongoing (still from video)
Cécile B. Evans, Working on What the Heart Wants, 2015-ongoing (still from video)
Cécile B. Evans, Working on What the Heart Wants, 2015-ongoing (still from video)
Cécile B. Evans, Working on What the Heart Wants, 2016
Cécile B. Evans, Working on What the Heart Wants, 2016
Cécile B. Evans, Working on What the Heart Wants, 2016
Cécile B. Evans, Working on What the Heart Wants, 2016
Cécile B. Evans, Working On Playlist, 2016