Film UbuWebCamille Henrot (b. 1978)
Dying Living Woman (2005)
Deep Inside (2005)
A Mountain for President (2007)
Film spatial (2008)
Million Dollars Point (2011)
Saturday (2017)
Best-known for her videos and animated films combining drawn art, music and occasionally scratched or reworked cinematic images, Camille Henrot’s work blurs the traditionally hierarchical categories of art history. Her recent work, adapted into the diverse media of sculpture, drawing, photography and, as always, film, considers the fascination with the "other" and "elsewhere" in terms of both geography and sexuality. This fascination is reflected in popular modern myths that have inspired her, such as King Kong and Frankenstein. The artist's impure, hybrid objects cast doubt upon the linear and partitioned transcription of Western history and highlight its borrowings and grey areas. In the series of sculptures Endangered Species, for example, the artist has created objects inspired by African art by using pieces from car engines; placed on tall pedestals, these slender silhouettes with zoomorphic allure make reference to the migration of symbols and forms as well as to the economic circulation of objects. This survival of the past, full of misunderstandings, shifts and projections (as shown in the slideshow Egyptomania, the film Cynopolis, drawings of the Sphinx, and even in the photographs of prehistoric flints) troubles cultural codes and conventions. In this way, Camille Henrot's work questions mental resistances and the past’s resonance, whether it be drawn from myth or from reality.
Camille Henrot's work has been exhibited at Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; Chisenhale Gallery, London; SculptureCenter in New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art in London; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the Museum of Modern Art in Paris; the New Orleans Museum of Art; and the Palais de Tokyo. In 2010 she was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. In 2013 she was the recipient of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington DC where she produced the video Grosse Fatigue which won the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Camille Henrot is represented by Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris; Johann König, Berlin; and Metro Pictures, New York. She has upcoming solo exhibitions at the New Museum, New York, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark, and is nominated for the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize.