Biography
McQueen has mastered the art of minimalist storytelling to deliver the utmost impact on his viewers.
Recognized internationally as one of the most important artists of his generation, Steve McQueen is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores universal themes, often addressing painful and challenging histories and exposes the fragility of the human condition.
Awarded the Turner Prize in 1999, McQueen has had his artwork presented at some of the most significant venues and museums around the world. His work has been featured in Documenta (1997 and 2002), he represented Great Britain at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and was selected several times for the Venice Biennale’s central pavilion (2003, 2007, 2013, and 2015). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012); Schaulager, Basel (2013); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2017); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017). In 2019 he presented YEAR 3 at Tate Britain and had a major one-person exhibition at Tate Modern in 2020 which toured to Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan in 2022. In Spring 2023, he presented Grenfell at the Serpentine South Gallery, London. In 2024 MᶜQueen unveiled a new installation, Bass, co-commissioned by Dia and Schaulager Basel, at Dia Beacon in New York.
McQueen has directed four feature films. His first, Hunger (2008), was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and his third, 12 Years a Slave (2013), received the Golden Globe, Oscar, and BAFTA awards for best picture in 2014. In 2020, he made Small Axe, an anthology of five films about London’s West Indian community and, in 2021, Uprising, a 3-part documentary with James Rogan, about the New Cross Fire in London in 1981. His documentary film, Occupied City, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. Blitz, his most recent feature, about the Second World War, which will have its world premiere as the opening film of the 68th BFI London Film Festival.
McQueen was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011. He was knighted in the 2020 New Year Honors list. McQueen was born in West London and is based in London and Amsterdam.
McQueen has mastered the art of minimalist storytelling to deliver the utmost impact on his viewers.
Selected Works
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![[Left] Thomas Feulmer and [right] Lisa Le Feuvre. Artworks: [Left] Alighiero Boetti, L’albero delle ore (Tree of hours), 1979. Tapestry. 128 × 76 inches (325.1 × 193 cm). Dallas Museum of Art, fractional gift of The Rachofsky Collection; [Right] Giulio Pa](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_800,h_800,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/ws-mariangoodman/usr/images/news/main_image/items/cd/cdf599bc9e65447f95e6cba716e50cfa/lisa-and-thomas-photo-credit-exploredinary.jpg)
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Animality
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Animality, exhibited at Marian Goodman Gallery, London in 2016. The very earliest cave paintings reveal that humans have cohabitated with animals for millennia. Yet the relationship is fraught and contradictory: we simultaneously mythologize, venerate, sacrifice, and exploit those who are not of our species. This paradox suggests that our connection with animals might be more complicated, and far richer, than commonly thought, and...
