BIOGRAPHY
Tania Candiani is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work explores the intersection of art, literature, music, architecture, science, and labor. Her production methods emphasize ancestral knowledge and its techniques and technologies. One of the central interests of her work is an expanded idea of translation, extended to the experimental field through the use of visual, sound, textual and symbolic languages. Many of her projects consider the universe of sound and the politics of listening as a tool capable of expanding and transforming perceptions, both human and non-human. A fundamental part of her work understands feminist policies and practices as a communal, affective and ritual experience.
In 2015, Candiani represented Mexico at the 56th Venice Biennale. Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums, institutions and independent spaces. Candiani has received the Guggenheim Fellowship in the Arts and the Smithsonian Institution Research Grant for Artists, amongst others. She is a member of the National System of Art Creators of Mexico. She lives and works in Mexico City.
COURSES TAUGHT
Tania Candiani was at UC Davis from May 6 - 10, 2024.
On Monday, May 6, there wasa film program in Cruess Hall, Room 1002. The program includes five videos created between 2019 and 2023. Candiani's videos evoke ecological worlds through immersive sound and imagery. Often the result of institutional commissions, the videos are in depth exploration of site that oscillate across multiple scales, from the molecular to the cosmic, contemporary to the ancient, audible to the inaudible. By exploring the biological, sonic, temporal, and visual, Candiani’s work encapsulates the affective realms in which community and communal memory exist.
On Thursday, May 9, Candiani gave a public lecture at the Manetti Shrem Museum at 4:30 p.m. The film program and artist talk were free and open to the public.
Candiani's seminar, open to undergraduate and graduate students in the Arts, explored the role of creativity in discovering the uncommon and usual in everyday places. It was structured around the activities of observing, listening, researching, making, and exploring, with an understanding that observation is the oldest and most pervasive form of collective empiricism. Sustained observation enlists the eyes and hands of many. It creates real and virtual communities within the affective bonds between observers and objects. Images, sounds and storytelling often act as visual avatars for objects unseen and unknown beyond their local setting.
PUBLIC LECTURE
Banner photo credit: Tidal Choreography (2023) by Tania Candiani