Candice Breitz’s new videowork 'Whiteface' takes the form of a series of found sound-clips to which Breitz lip-syncs while dressed in a white shirt and various blonde wigs. The lip-syncing, inevitably summoning the performativity of TikTok, is to sources that range from American comedian Bill Maher and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson to homemade social-media clips. They encompass a variety of statements on whiteness. These range from alt-right ideological utterances to what Breitz (who is white), at the opening’s public interview, referred to as the pronouncements of “good whites” – those who believe they mean well, but still perpetuate racism.
'Whiteface' plays on the infamous theatrical caricature of ‘blackface’. But it also references one of Breitz’s earliest works, 'Ghost Series' (1994–96), in which she ‘whited out’ (or ‘Tippexed’) the faces and bodies of Black South African women found on postcards, dressed in tribal outfits.