Oliver Beer at Le Louvre A Thousand Faces

Join Oliver Beer at 5pm on Monday 27th September for an artist talk and presentation of his film & sound project, A Thousand Faces. 

Realised in collaboration with Louvre Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi Art, A Thousand Faces saw Beer transform a desert fortress into a darkened labyrinth of video and sound, with six ‘Reanimation Paintings’ installed like flickering icons in the dark. 

To make the films, Beer invited 2000 children from Abu Dhabi to copy and wildly reinterpret key works from the Louvre Abu Dhabi collection. He then scanned their drawings and printed them onto celluloid 16mm film as individual frames, so that in the installation the children’s drawings pass by at a rate of 12 per second. The result is a psychedelic reimagining of the artworks, subliminally infused with each childs’ own cultural and social interpretations. The rapidly driving sound track includes a note for every image that flickers by; played on a Middle Eastern oud and putting into juxtaposition the western and middle-eastern musical scales.

The films became incredibly dense: much cheekier and more socially engaged than I could have imagined. — Oliver Beer

The talk will be part of the Thanks for Nothing Art and Engagement Colloquium and in the spirit of the Thanks for Nothing's educational emphasis, will discuss how the commission created engagement and a re-imagination of the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s permanent collection for the children growing up there. 

Monday 27th September

5pm
Le Louvre, Paris