Bill Viola Movies

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 three panels of Bill Viola’s triptych show video footage of birth (on the left), death (on the right) and a metaphorical journey between...

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

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

Part of Bill Viola's "Transfigurations" series, this work shows a mother and her daughters enacting a transfiguration when they choose to pass...

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...

In Basin of Tears, two videos are projected side by side on two adjacent screens mounted to the wall. This video diptych creates an incredible...

The title of Vegetable Memory derives from the writings of Jalaludin Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet. Evolving as what Viola terms a "kind of...

In this work's left panel, The Crossing (1996), a walking male figure is consumed by fire on a 27-foot vertical plasma screen projection while in the...

Ancient of Days is a remarkable series of "canons and fugues for video" that comprises Viola's most sophisticated structural and metaphorical...

Information is an exercise in technological reflexivity, an early investigation of the material presence of the electronic medium. From a technical...

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

Continuously running video installation: in a small alcove, a wood column extends from the floor and ceiling, with a gap in the center formed by two...

Two figures are captured in slow motion, walking closely together, across a stretch of the Mojave Desert towards the camera, with no end in sight.

Part of Bill Viola’s Transfiguration series, The Innocents explores the presence of the dead in the world of the living. The video documents a...

Writes Viola: "Sodium Vapor was recorded over a period of several weeks in the hours between one and five in the morning on the streets of an...

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...