Remembrance（2001），Single-channel video，16’ 19”，Courtesy of Collezione La Gaia, Busca-Italy

Remembrance is one of four parts in American artist, Bill Viola’s 16 minute-long film series, The Quintet of the Unseen. Captured using a high speed camera, the work shows the unfolding expressions of a lady in extreme slow motion, where time is suspended for both the actor and the audience alike. Perhaps what lends most significance to this series is the historical context in which the work was created. Originally produced in the aftermath of his father’s death and exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in the wake of 9/11, The Quintet of the Unseen provides a focal point for a grieving New York as well as explores the cathartic power within personal suffering, bereavement and grief. 

For Viola, his central motivation behind referring to particularly Renaissance religious paintings is to recreate the figures’ facial and bodily expressions and postures in those compositions. These expressions are almost always exaggerated and stylised, as if conveying archetypal expressions of sorrow, joy, compassion, and love, reflecting Viola’s extensive oeuvre, including his interests in spirituality.