Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Grace Schwindt

Lives in London,

Born 1979, Offenbach, Germany

Artist

I use theatrical sets for performance and video works with minimal architectural elements and props to mark a location-for example, a family home, or a cliff in Greece where a soldier is standing. I place bodies in these spaces, including my own, and use a tightly scripted choreography in which every move relates to institutionalized systems that rely on exclusion and destruction. Interviews that I conduct with individuals often serve as starting points for fictionalized dialogues that are then delivered by different performers.

While trying to represent a system, I deconstruct it by using the same mechanisms that I apply to build it: bodies, movements, speech, furniture, architecture and costumes. For example, the film Tenant describes the routines that take place in a family home, such as eating together, doing homework or bathing. These routines are embedded into a wider historical and social context and get repeatedly interrupted-such as a performer falling down stairs at the very moment she reaches the top. The body in my work is turned into a fragile prop in constant danger. I wish to empty institutionalized spaces of meaning. However this doesn't lead to neutrality, but becomes again loaded with gender, age, race and class.

2009 Associate Artist Programme, LUX, London, UK

2008 M.F.A., Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK

2005 B.A., University of Westminster, London, UK

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2012 Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, UK

2012 Void Gallery, Derry, UK

2010 White Columns Gallery, New York, NY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2009 It's hard to find the beginning, and impossible to fathom the end, Trafo Gallery, Budapest, Hungary

2009 EASTinternational, Norwich University College of the Arts, Norwich, UK

2009 Freshfacedandwildeyed, Photographers' Gallery, London, UK

2009 The Neutrality of this Section is Disputed, ReMap, 2nd Athens Biennale, Athens, Greece

2009 Salon 09, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK

2008 Calypso, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, Spain

SELECTED PERFORMANCES

2011 The Signal, South London Gallery, London, UK

2010 Counterpoint 1, Part 1: The Individual Account, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK

2010 Presenting Counterpoint, Part of Podium: The Idea of the Self, Kurzfilmtage: 56th International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany

SELECTED GRANTS, HONORS AND AWARDS

2012 Wiels Artist-in-Residency, Brussels, Belgium

2011 Film London Artists' Moving Image Network, FLAMIN Productions Award

2010 Boise Travel Award

2009 Film and Video Umbrella, Free to Air Award