Steve McQueen: Sunshine State

From March 31 to July 31, 2022, Pirelli HangarBicocca presents Sunshine State, an exhibition devoted to Turner Prize–winning artist and Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen (London, 1969; lives and works in London and Amsterdam). The exhibition is curated by Vicente Todolí and organized in collaboration with Tate Modern, London, where a first version of the exhibition, titled Steve McQueen, was held from February 13 to September 6, 2020.

For Pirelli HangarBicocca, McQueen has conceived a site-specific exhibition project. Through a non-chronological layout, Sunshine State presents an immersive experience of McQueen’s unique visual language, offering a survey of the artist’s practice in the visual arts over the last two decades. The six film works and one sculpture exhibited across the Navate space and the exterior of Pirelli HangarBicocca, are among the most important of McQueen’s career, representing free narrative models and unexpected points of view on wide-ranging, intersectional aspects of historical and contemporary social contexts.

Taken together, the works form a visual narrative, offering an opportunity to imagine new readings of McQueen’s work. The exhibition also includes the premiere of the new video installation Sunshine State—a work that has been in the artist’s mind for more than 20 years, and commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2022.

Lauded as one of the most important contemporary artists and filmmakers, Steve McQueen has had a major influence on the way film is shown and understood. Taking a radical look at the human condition, its dramas and fragility, McQueen’s touching and thought-provoking work asks important questions about urgent issues, such as the construction of identity, belonging, and the right to freedom. In a career spanning over 25 years, Steve McQueen has created some of the most significant works in the visual arts. In 1999 he won the prestigious Turner Prize and has represented his country at Venice Biennale in 2009. 

McQueen has also directed four feature films: Widows (2018), 12 Years a Slave (2013), for which he won the Oscar for Best Picture, Shame (2010), and Hunger (2008), which earned him the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2020 he also created Small Axe, an anthology of five films, and most recently, a series of documentaries for the BBC, Uprising (2021), Black Power: A British Story of Resistance (2021) and Subnormal: A British Scandal (2021).

McQueen has had major solo exhibitions at many institutions of international prominence, including Tate Modern, London (2020); Tate Britain, London (2019-2021); MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); Schaulager, Basel (2013); Art Institute of Chicago (2012); National Portrait Gallery, London (2010); Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2008); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2007); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2005); ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2003); Museu Serralves, Porto, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2002); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Kunsthalle Zürich (1999); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1998); Portikus, Frankfurt (1997). McQueen has participated in two consecutive editions of documenta in Kassel (2002 and 1997), and four of the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2007, and 2003).

The catalogue
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, designed by Irma Boom, including extensive photographic documentation and contributions by Paul Gilroy, Cora Gilroy-Ware, Solveig Nelson and Hamza Walker.

Public program
On the occasion of Sunshine State, Pirelli HangarBicocca will feature a program of public events:

Friday, May 13, 2022, 7pm: talk with Steve MᶜQueen and Cora Gilroy

Friday, June 10, 2022, 9pm: DJ set by the legendary musician and producer Dennis Bovell, who takes inspiration from the sound system of Jamaican origin that took hold in London in the mid-1970s.

Saturday, June 11 and Sunday, June 12, 2022: screening of the film anthology Small Axe at Fondazione Prada Cinema.

Sunday, June 12, 2022: talk with Steve MᶜQueen and international guests in collaboration with Fondazione Prada.

Exhibition program
Sunshine State is part of the 2022–2023 exhibition program, conceived by Artistic Director Vicente Todolí in collaboration with the curatorial department: Roberta Tenconi, Curator; Lucia Aspesi, Assistant Curator; Fiammetta Griccioli, Assistant Curator.

The program continues, in the Navate space, with the exhibitions Bruce Nauman (September 15, 2022 to February 26, 2023); Ann Veronica Janssens (April 6 to July 30, 2023); and James Lee Byars (October 2023 to March 2024). The Shed space hosts Anicka Yi (February 24 to July 24, 2022); Dineo Seshee Bopape (October 6, 2022 to January 29, 2023); Gian Maria Tosatti (February 23 to July 16, 2023); and Thao Nguyen Phan (September 2023 to February 2024).