Adad Hannah, A Moment of Reflection, 2008, colour photograph, 102 x 136 cm / 40 x 53.5 in. Produced with the cooperation of the Museo Nacional del Prado. Image courtesy of the artist and the Musée d’art de Joliette.
Adad Hannah: Glints and Reflections
24 October 2019 to 2 February 2020
Curated by Lynn Bannon and Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
Produced and circulated by the Musée d’art de Joliette
Public Reception and Artist Talk: Friday 1 November, 7 pm
Adad Hannah's “living pictures” play with the fascinated and attentive eye of the spectator by using dynamic modes of expression such a photography, video, installation and performance to generate the still image. This exhibition brings together key works made in the past decade that focus on his enduring interest in the photographic image in relation to personal and social histories.
Hannah skillfully orchestrates scenes in which participants, whose gestures are fixed without being totally immobile, take part in various activities staged by the artist. Often developing his projects over months or years through intensive research and working with large groups of participants in community workshops, Hannah’s staged images draw on references ranging from celebrated historical paintings and sculptures to scenes of everyday lives.
Time and its complex relationship with photography and video occupies a prominent place in Hannah’s work. He consistently diversifies the means of animating a fixed image, beginning with capturing a pose on video that is held momentarily by wavering bodies. In recent work, the artist has generated the illusion of movement by taking many sequential photographs of a body in action in order to successively articulate all its phases, reminiscent of the chronophotography of Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904).
Adad Hannah was born in New York in 1971, spent his childhood in Israel and England, and moved to Vancouver in the early 1980s. He lives and works in Vancouver and exhibits his work nationally and internationally.
This project is generously supported by The Musagetes Fund held at Kitchener Waterloo Community Foundation and the Allan MacKay Curatorial Endowment Fund, established by the Musagetes Arts and Culture Fund.
