Bill Viola Movies

Anima, which means “soul” in Latin and is the root of the word animation, is from a series of works inspired by Renaissance paintings of...

Using a camera moving along a predetermined path to create the effect of a simulated zoom, Sweet Light refers to the seduction of illumination,...

Playing Soul Music to My Freckles is a minimalist performance in which a bare loudspeaker, playing an Aretha Franklin song, is seen on the artist's...

Bill viola film

Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of...

Junkyard Levitation is a visual pun on the concept of "mind over matter," as a man attempts to levitate while lying prone in a junkyard. Writes...

The title of The Semi-Circular Canals refers to the portion of the human ear that regulates balance. Viola constructed a platform on which he and the...

Created by Bill Viola and Kira Perov and opened in May 2014, Martyrs shows four individuals, across four colour vertical plasma screens, being...

This video work is one of a group of pieces known as 'The Passions' which explores human emotions, inspired by early European devotional paintings....

In A Million Other Things (2), changes in light and sound on the edge of a pond during an eight-hour period from day to night are composed in...

Video on two flat-screen monitors with sound

Silent Life records the first hours and days of life through a series of portraits of newborn babies in a hospital nursery. The alienating hospital...

2005. Video/sound installation. Performer: Robin Bonaccorsi.

Writes Viola: "A succession of individual images focusing on mortality, decay and disintegration, are delineated by long, slow fades to black. The...

Installation on two screens where the two characters burst into tears, gradually lowering their heads until their faces touch the water.

Viola describes The Wheel of Becoming as concerning "the notion of the parallel nature of reality, that is, simultaneous events separated in space."...

The hands of three generations are seen in this work – a young boy, father, mother and grandmother. Slowly and deliberately, the four pairs of...

The rituals and philosophies of indigenous non-Western cultures recur throughout Viola's work. In 1976, he travelled to the Solomon Islands with...

Slowly Turning Narrative includes two projections on a large central rotating screen. One presents images of virtually everything that constitutes...