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Exodus

A work made of super 8 film, silent, transferred to digital video (monitor); 1:05 min. loop.
© Steve McQueen

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  • A work made of super 8 film, silent, transferred to digital video (monitor); 1:05 min. loop.

Date:

1992/97

Artist:

Steve McQueen
English, born 1969

About this artwork

Steve McQueen is an artist and filmmaker of Grenadian descent who was born and raised in London and lives in Amsterdam. In his reductive, often abstracted works, he pares down the projected image to its basic elements: light and dark, motion and stillness, silence and sound. The meanings in McQueen’s intensely concentrated films and projected-image installations—some exquisitely choreographed, others improvised—are at once elusive, elliptical, and subtly transgressive. Avant-garde film traditions, including cinema verité and the revolutionary films of figures such as Buster Keaton, Jean Vigo, and Andy Warhol inform McQueen’s improvisational approach, which is often defined by his preference for the handheld camera; distilled but coded actions, gestures, and performative expressions; and restrained post-production editing. Often, the bodies featured in the work include the artist’s own; almost always, they are black. With little interest in excavating the repressed psychological history of the African diaspora or exploring identity politics per se, McQueen instead facilitates his subjects’ creative empowerment through succinct works that leave ultimate interpretation to the viewer.
Exodus, McQueen’s first mature effort, distinguishes itself from the balance of his oeuvre in that it captures an event that the artist happened to encounter while out with his handheld Super 8 camera. This short, silent film documents two smartly dressed men from the West Indies moving through the crowded streets of London. Each carries a potted coconut palm, a crude, if accidental, symbol of the tropics. Despite the burdens they carry and the challenges of navigating the city, they move efficiently through their environment, integrated with it even as the merrily waving palms above their heads distinguish them in the crowd. Their pace soon outstrips McQueen’s, and they move away from the recording device that documents—even questions—their actions. They cross against oncoming traffic and deftly board a double-decker bus. The final scene shows one of the men waving from a rear window as the vehicle moves away. Like the 1977 song of the same name by renowned reggae singer Bob Marley, Exodus is a poetic, largely metaphoric consideration of experiences and migrations within the global black diaspora.
— Entry, Film, Video, New Media, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 35 (1), pp. 92–97.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Steve McQueen

Title

Exodus

Place

England (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1992–1997

Medium

Super 8 film, silent, transferred to digital video (monitor); 1:05 min. loop

Edition

2 of 4

Credit Line

Donna and Howard Stone New Media Fund

Reference Number

2005.20

Copyright

© Steve McQueen

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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