ADAD HANNAH

2020

Oct 2

Social Distancing Portraits, 2020
4K videos each approx. 30 seconds; total run time 1 hour, 33 minutes
Music composed by Brigitte Dajczer @brigamusic and
Daniel Ingram @dannyimusic

RIVERSIDE PARK

On March 14th of this year, Vancouver–based artist Adad Hannah found himself feeling frustrated and paralyzed by the ensuing pandemic and decided to respond by making artwork to share other’s experiences. The project has now amounted to over 200 collected videos made in his identifiable tableau-vivant style, accompanied by statements from the people in them describing their experience of the pandemic. Hannah's “living pictures” appear like still photographs, but in fact, show the subject attempting to stay still for a few minutes, frozen in time. Using a long camera lens from 5 metres away, Hannah approached strangers in public places from a distance and asked if he could record a video of them standing still from far away. He reflects, “I wanted to see if I could capture this strange and tense in-between moment we are currently in. Things are changing fast yet we're also sort of stuck in time not knowing what comes next.”

Hannah has posted his unedited Social Distancing Portraits daily on Instagram, revealing the tension between physical distance, the need for social connection and the role social media plays during this time of increased isolation. The collection as a whole contains series within that focus on protesters at Black Lives Matter demonstrations, essential workers, recent graduates, families, Pride participants, among numerous others. This project has also been presented as the first of the Momus Artists in Isolation series https://momus.ca/artists-in-isolation-adad-hannahs-tableaux-vivants/ and can be viewed as he continues to add to the project @adadhannah on Instagram.

Adad Hannah was born in New York in 1971. He spent his childhood in Israel and England, and moved to Vancouver, BC in the early 1980s. He lives and works in Vancouver. He holds a PhD and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. His work is in public and private collections around the world, and has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, West Africa, China, South Korea, Australia, Russia, Argentina and Brazil. He has won a number of awards, including the Canada Council for the Arts’ Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding mid-career artists in 2009. Hannah is currently represented by Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain in Montreal and Equinox Gallery in Vancouver.

www.adadhannah.com
@adadhannah