Watch Bubbles
Curated by Vicente Todolí
Exhibition organized by Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, in collaboration with Tate Modern, London
Turner Prize winning artist and Oscar winning filmmaker Steve McQueen (London, 1969; lives and works in London and Amsterdam) has created some of the most significant works of moving image in the last 30 years. Taking a radical look at the human condition, its dramas and fragility, McQueen’s touching and thought-provoking work asks important questions about urgent issues, such as the construction of identity, belonging, and the right to freedom.
“Sunshine State” presents an immersive experience of Steve McQueen’s unique visual language. The six film works and one sculpture in the exhibition are among the most important of the artist’s career, representing free narrative models and unexpected points of view on wide-ranging, intersectional aspects of historical and contemporary social contexts. For Pirelli HangarBicocca, McQueen has conceived a site-specific exhibition project that unfolds in the Navate and Cubo spaces, and on the exterior of the building. Through a non-chronological layout, the exhibition features a survey of Steve McQueen’s career in the visual arts, highlighting the evolution of his practice over the last two decades. Taken together, the works presented here form a visual narrative, revealing the artist’s radical take on reality and offering an opportunity to imagine new readings of McQueen’s poetics.
The title of the exhibition evokes the artist’s new video installation, Sunshine State (2022), commissioned and produced by the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2022, which is shown here in its world premiere.
Steve McQueen’s works and solo shows have been presented at many institutions of international prominence, including Tate Modern, London (2020); Tate Britain, London (2019-2021); MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); Schaulager, Basel (2013); Art Institute of Chicago (2012); National Portrait Gallery, London (2010); Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2008); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2007); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2005); ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2003); Museu Serralves, Porto, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2002); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Kunsthalle Zürich (1999); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1998); Portikus, Frankfurt (1997). McQueen has participated in two consecutive editions of documenta in Kassel (2002 and 1997), and four of the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2007, and 2003), where he also represented Great Britain in 2009.
He has received a variety of awards, including the Johannes Vermeer Prize (2016), Harvard University, W.E.B. Du Bois Medal (2014), CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) (2011), OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) (2002), and the Turner Prize, Tate Gallery, London (1999). McQueen was also awarded the Caméra d’Or for Hunger at the Cannes Film Festival (2008) and the Best Picture Oscar for 12 Years a Slave in 2014.
