Tate Modern today announced a new annual commission to support experimental and visionary new work. It will provide a platform for international artists at the cutting-edge of contemporary practice, enabling them to realise innovative and future-facing projects at a critical point in their careers.
Entitled the Infinities Commission, its name reflects the boundless curiosity of contemporary artists, the multiplicity of tools and technologies they use, and the limitless diversity of their approaches. The first commission will open in spring 2025 in The Tanks, Tate Modern’s unique spaces dedicated to performance, film and installation, and will be accessible to the public for free each year.
Catherine Wood, Tate Modern’s Director of Programmes, said: “Artists have always been innovators, taking ideas, materials and technologies in unexpected directions and pushing them to their limits. Today, such artists are working in highly inventive ways, freely crossing a variety of disciplines to create speculative, disruptive, or immersive projects that sit outside conventional artistic categories. The Infinities Commission will give that kind of innovative work a home at Tate Modern and allow a broader public to experience it.”
Each year, an invited panel of experts will select an artist for the commission. The artist will then create a major new work to be unveiled in the Tanks the following spring. In addition, the panel will also select three other artists to receive £10,000 of research and development funding to support the advancement of their work. The commissioned artist and the R&D funding recipients will all discuss their practice at a public ‘show and tell’ event. This event will also explore the latest thinking on contemporary culture, technology and creative innovation through a keynote speech from a prominent specialist in the field.
The first year’s selection panel comprises:
- Brian Eno, musician and artist
- Oulimata Gueye, critic and curator
- Anne Imhof, artist
- Andrea Lissoni, Artistic Director of Haus der Kunst in Munich
- Legacy Russell, Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen in New York
In summer 2024 the panel will select the first artist to be commissioned. The artist’s new work will be unveiled in The Tanks at Tate Modern in spring 2025, coinciding with the first annual event.
Brian Eno is a British musician, producer, visual artist and activist who first came to prominence as a founding member of Roxy Music. He has since released over forty albums of his own music, collaborated with figures such David Bowie, David Byrne and Grace Jones, and produced albums for many others including U2, Devo and Laurie Anderson. His work as a visual artist has been exhibited internationally, and in 2021 he launched EarthPercent, which raises money from the music industry for environmental charities.
Oulimata Gueye is a Senegalese and French critic and curator, whose research focuses on the intersection of digital, scientific and popular culture. She has created and co-organised numerous international multidisciplinary art events. She has a longstanding interest and commitment to the uses of digital technologies in Africa and within its diasporas. More recently she was co-curator of Digital Imaginaries, a series of exhibitions at institutions across Africa, and curator of Université des Futurs Africains at the Lieu Unique in Nantes. She is currently head of the Art post-graduate program at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (Ensba Lyon).
Anne Imhof is a German artist whose work encompasses performance, choreography, film, painting, drawing, music, installation and sculpture. She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the 2017 Venice Biennale and has since staged solo projects at venues including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and The Art Institute of Chicago.
Andrea Lissoni is an Italian curator who has been Artistic Director of Haus Der Kunst in Munich since 2020. Much of his career has focused on moving image, sound and time-based media, including in his previous role as Senior Curator, International Art (Film) at Tate Modern. He is a member of the advisory board of EYE Prize at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, of the Collecting Committee of the Serralves Museum, Porto and his published works include books about Joan Jonas, Céline Condorelli and Philippe Parreno.
Legacy Russell is an American curator and writer. She is the Executive Director & Chief Curator of New York’s experimental new media, art and performance institution The Kitchen, and previously worked as the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her academic and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital culture and new media. Her first book, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, was published in 2020 and will soon be followed by her second, BLACK MEME.
