International Artist-In-Residence
New Works 00.1

Tracey Rose

Johannesburg, South Africa

March 09–April 16, 2000

about the artist

Tracey Rose was born in 1974 in Durban, South Africa and currently lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. She received her B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1996. She has taught at Vaal Triangle Technikon, Vanderbijl Park, South Africa and also at University of the Witwatersrand.

Rose’s performance, video and installation work has been exhibited extensively in South Africa, including the 2nd Johannesburg Biennial (1997). Her work has been seen at the Biltmuseet, Umeå, Sweden (1998); Fondiazione Sandretto per l’arte, Turino, Italy (1998); The Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany (1999); The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa (1997); and The New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1999). This is her first one-person exhibition in the U.S.

Often based in performance, Rose’s work considers—and forces the viewer to reconsider—the formation of identity and the subject of racial politics. Rose inserts personal narrative into institutional frameworks, exemplified by her well-received project for the 1997 Johannesburg Biennial when she hired a paroled prisoner to carve stories into the walls of the South African National Gallery.

Tracey Rose was chosen for her ArtPace residency by the March 1998 panel consisting of Dan Cameron, Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Amada Cruz, Kellie Jones, Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Nancy Rubins.

about the project

For ArtPace, Tracey Rose presents a new video installation. In her video, an onslaught of a boxer’s punches is projected onto the gallery’s wall. Layered images displace the location of the viewer and the subject as the boxer moves on and off the screen, in and out of the camera’s multiple views. By filming the blows with cameras embedded within an actual punching bag, Rose effectively positions the viewer as both the aggressor and the target. Her filmic inversion simultaneously implicates and empathizes the viewer. That the blows are thrown by Rose herself further complicates the installation’s point of view. Rose makes physical notions of oppression, questioning whether violence is projected inward or targeted outward.

With this video piece, Rose deconstructs and reconstructs the role of the individual in society, juxtaposing internal/external with personal/social. Rose reminds us of the importance of multiple perspectives, multiple identities and multiple visions in a changing, moving world.

> back to top