Sondra Perry, an American moving-image artist, was recently announced as the winner for the inaugural Dream Commission, by Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme.
The Dream Commission is a biennial project, awarded to inspire greatness and foster creativity in the medium of moving-image art, inviting artists to investigate the idea of ‘dreams and dreaming’. Sondra Perry was unanimously selected as winner by an international Jury of leading art world individuals from a shortlist of four artists.
As winner of the Dream Commission, Sondra Perry will create a new moving-image artwork which investigates the narrative of ‘dreams’. The new artwork will be unveiled at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland in early 2022 and exhibited at Serpentine, London in 2022. New Jersey-based interdisciplinary artist Sondra Perry works across the media of artificial intelligence, animation, performance, and video, amongst others, and her work explores themes of race, identity and technology.Â
Perry’s proposed artwork builds upon the themes of lineage, memory and longing, as explored in her short-form artwork, Lineage for a Phantom Zone. The work will utilise LED panels, installed above, below and around the viewer, to create a ‘dreamscape’ in which the body and consciousness will float. Perry will explore the idea of dreams as a space for reconfiguring history, taking inspiration from an old photograph of her grandmother in the ruins of the house where she grew up. Perry’s experience of isolation from family and friends, caused by the global pandemic, will lead her to explore cravings for touch and intimacy in the digital world.
During the current global pandemic, Rolls-Royce has continued supporting the arts; indeed, it recognises that this is a time when the role of artists and the commissioning of new artwork is more vital than ever.
Rolls-Royce’s ambition for the Dream Commission is to establish the marque as the leading platform for advancing the medium of moving image art today. Celebrating the latest innovations in the field, Dream Commission works can be from any medium in moving image, including experimental film, video, animation, and immersive and participatory installations. Content may be presented in a wide variety of formats, such as augmented and virtual reality. The 2021 Dream Commission is brought to life in partnership with the Serpentine, London and the Fondation Beyeler, Basel.
As the two-year process concludes, this year, the cycle will begin again, yielding a group of landmark works of moving-image art. To stay up-to-date and discover exclusive content relating to Muse and the Dream Commission follow @rollsroycemuse. Discover Dream Commission content here.