THE YEAR
IN MOVING IMAGE ART

2021 gave us the latest chapter in the unstoppable rise of moving image art. As the new year dawned with all the possibilities of a reopening world, artists seized renewed opportunities to reclaim the cultural realm and to bring their art into fresh territory – reconfiguring the experiences of the pandemic era into bold new work. With 2021 drawing to a close, we reflect on the stand-out moments of a year in which moving image cemented its status as the art form of choice for expressing the realities of our age.

2021 was the year that moving image and augmented reality stepped firmly into the real world.

This was first seen in London, as a parade of digital art transformed the city’s South Bank into an experimental, ‘invisible’ exhibition by the name of ‘Unreal City’. It only took a mobile phone to see what the naked eye could not: Cate Blanchett intoned ‘I love you’ directly to the viewer in a work by Marco Brambilla, while Olafur Eliasson made the Northern Lights appear in broad daylight and Tomás​ ​Saraceno’s gargantuan spider roamed the shore of the Thames.

In February, at the stroke of midnight, visitors to New York’s Times Square found themselves surrounded by a pulsating tableau of digitally manipulated skin. Synchronized across more than 70 screens, ‘Flesh Wall’ by Sondra Perry – who would go on to be announced as the winner of Muse’s inaugural Dream Commission in May – took the American artist’s interest in the interplay between race, identity and technology and blew it up to a monumental scale in the public arena.

This would prove to be a theme throughout the year as from London to Tokyo, some of the world’s most iconic screens took on another life as giant art installations. In July, Dream Commission juror and Muse artist Isaac Julien embraced the movement by dominating historic Piccadilly Circus with an augmented reality experience of his powerful new moving image work, ‘Lessons of the Hour’ inspired by the life and speeches of Frederick Douglass.

At Art Basel, the Swiss mega-fair and cornerstone of the artworld calendar, Sondra Perry offered a captivating preview of her latest work ahead of the upcoming Dream Commission exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in February 2022. Perry flew in from New Jersey for a highly anticipated performance of the precursor to her full work, ‘Lineage for a Phantom Zone’ before being joined in conversation by fellow filmmaker Isaac Julien.

By the second half of the year, the reawakened artworld was roaring back to life. Museum doors had been thrown open wide, with brand new venues like Hong Kong’s M+ and LUMA Arles among those enticing the crowds with immersive moving image art. Major exhibitions finally returned and with them came a spotlight on video art, with shows focusing on two of its leading proponents opening on either side of the Atlantic in September.

In Scandinavia, the subterranean exhibition space of Helsinki’s Amos Rex took on the charged atmosphere of a chapel. This sanctum was illuminated with cascading water and flames, in ‘Inner Journey,’ an exploration of video art pioneer Bill Viola’s fascination with birth, death and spirituality.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Swiss video and installation artist Pipilotti Rist brought a psychedelic riot of light and sound to Los Angeles’ MOCA. Inviting visitors to lie in beds blanketed in colorful projections, and to make themselves at home within her exuberant imagination, Rist created a wonderland of delights that would have been unthinkable in any other art form.

Also in September, legendary performance artist Marina Abramović debuted an epic cinematic artwork based on the life of her idol, opera singer Maria Callas. ‘Seven Deaths’ featured the artist along with Hollywood actor Willem Dafoe, acting out reimagined death scenes from seminal operas in which Callas starred – meeting her demise seven times over at the hands of knives, snakes, fire and other deadly items which have been emblematic in Abramović’s own career.

This would prove to be a theme throughout the year as from London to Tokyo, some of the world’s most iconic screens took on another life as giant art installations. In July, Dream Commission juror and Muse artist Isaac Julien embraced the movement by dominating historic Piccadilly Circus with an augmented reality experience of his powerful new moving image work, ‘Lessons of the Hour’ inspired by the life and speeches of Frederick Douglass.

2021 has seen digitally native art gaining even more momentum. With the rising demand for moving image art from collectors and public institutions, we also saw the NFT market confirm that non fungible tokens are more than a passing trend.

Back in March, Christie’s became the first major auction house to offer a purely digital work of art for sale. No one could have predicted that it would go for a record-smashing $69m, placing its creator, digital artist Beeple, among the most valuable living artists in the world. Soon after, Sotheby’s realized a total of $17m for works by digital creator Pak, one of which consisted of a single pixel.

A fuse was lit under an already-fizzing market for NFTs: sales increased by an estimated $2bn in the first half of 2021, with contributions appearing from a host of well-known names – from artists Damien Hirst and Banksy to filmmaker David Lynch. In November, it was Beeple again who made headlines with the sale of a hybrid, generative video sculpture for almost $30m. Just as ‘Human One’ suggests new possibilities for moving image art, NFTs continue to shake up the art market in this digital age.

2021 prompted the art world to re-imagine physical experiences and focus on more exclusive events with a strong immersive digital component. New locations, public spaces and large-scale installations have become key for the presentation of contemporary art. Artists have opened new venues of imagination that engage people emotionally, thanks to progressively more sophisticated technological tools. Moving image and digital will continue to lead the way in responding to this fast-changing world where both audiences and creators strive for innovation and multi-sensory inspiration.