ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
TANK Shanghai quietly presents “Close-up/Quiet as it’s kept,” Deborah-Joyce Holman’s first solo exhibition in Asia, supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, the Swiss Arts Council. The multidisciplinary artist Deborah-Joyce Holman presents their eponymous recent moving image work in a new three channel installation conceived especially for Tank T.
Close-Up/Quiet as it’s kept, stripped entirely of narrative structure, portrays two scenes that could easily be discarded as transitional. This is representative of Deborah-Joyce Holman’s work: they deploy the mundane as a counterforce against the spectacle Black life is often represented as and as a tool to re-negotiate the notion of agency in the creation of said representation. Holman’s practice engages critical discourse on visual culture, race and queerness, all of which inform their approach of artmaking as a node within a wider context of economic and semiotic mechanisms.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Deborah-Joyce Holman
Deborah-Joyce Holman lives and works between London, UK and Basel, Switzerland. Their ongoing practice of painting, moving image, sound and installation explores the strategies and sites of refusal across Black and queer contemporary and antecedent visual culture. Their work has been exhibited internationally, most notable solo presentations include Kunsthalle Bern and Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (both 2023); Cordova, Barcelona; Istituto Svizzero, Palermo; schwarzescafé, Luma Westbau, Zurich; Sentiment, Zurich; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (all 2022) and Cherish, Geneva (2021). Upcoming solo exhibitions include Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany (2024) and Swiss Institute, New York City, USA (2025). Deborah-Joyce Holman is represented by Galerie Gregor Staiger (Zurich/Milan).
Single frame of the work
Installation View
Artist on site
