Janet CARDIFF　The Forty Part Motet｜21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Information

Period:

2025.5.24(Sat.) - 2025.9.15(Mon./holiday)

Venue:

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Closed:

Mondays (except July 21, August 11, September 15), July 22, August 12

For More Information:

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Phone: +81-76-220-2800
E-Mail: info@kanazawa21.jp

“The Forty Part Motet” is a traveling exhibition that is touring Japan by Janet CARDIFF, an artist whose work is in the museum collection. Based on the 16th century English composer Thomas Tallis’ The Forty Part Motet (Spem in Alium), this sound installation is a sculptural construction of space in which forty voices from a choir are played through forty speakers. The individual voices resound from each of these speakers arranged in an elliptical shape, while the multilayered overlapping of sounds creates the impression of being in the presence of a chorus of forty voices, offering viewers the experience of a fusion of sound and space.

Artist Profile

Janet CARDIFF, The Forty Part Motet, 2001
Kunstmuseum des Kantons Thurgau, Switzerland with Artist 2002. Photo by Stephan Rohner. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York / Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco / Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo.

Based in rural British Columbia, Canada, Janet Cardiff (1957-) works across a variety of media, including film, video and photography. In 2001 she represented Canada at the Venice Biennale, collaborating with George Bures Miller. Since then, as part of a duo with Miller she has enjoyed international acclaim for innovative and immersive installations that fuse sound, sculpture, and technology to deliver composite sensory experiences that engage both auditory and visual perception. These include the exhibition “Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller” at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa in 2017.

Images

Janet CARDIFF, The Forty Part Motet, 2001
Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, Austria, 2005. Photo by Markus Tretter.
Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York / Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo

Credit

Organized by:

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Kanazawa Art Promotion and Development Foundation)