Candice BreitzWhiteface #3, 2022
‘Whiteface #’1 and ‘Whiteface #3’ belong to a series of photographic portraits that extend Candice Breitz’s two-channel video installation ‘Whiteface’. In each of the triptych works, Breitz embodies and isolates three personas drawn from the original video, each styled to reflect a particular strand of white identity as expressed through found language and online media. Using costume, wigs and unsettling contact lenses, the artist constructs exaggerated avatars that draw directly from her performative interventions in the film. Stripped of movement and speech, the still images focus attention on the surface of the performance – the costume, the gaze, the posture – transforming the ephemeral act of mimicry into an enduring visual study.
Each portrait invites reflection on the performative nature of whiteness and the visual codes that support its authority, entitlement or fragility. Breitz’s self-portraits do not offer psychological portraits of individuals but instead act as distilled symbols of whiteness as it manifests in public discourse. By turning the camera on herself, the artist implicates her own position while also creating a space for viewers to consider how racial identity is rehearsed, constructed and projected. The portraits, like the video work, ask how whiteness is seen, how it sees itself, and how it speaks – often in ways that seek to preserve power while disavowing responsibility.
