Multidisciplinary artist Camille Henrot won the Silver Lion for best young promising artist at this year’s Venice Biennale for her heady “encyclopedic” video, which mixes slam poetry-style narration with a percussive soundtrack as it describes an increasingly breathless excursion through the history of the universe.

Grosse Fatigue is a curious hymn to foundation and creation, but above all to death and extinction. The soundtrack was composed by French DJ and composer Joakim Bouaziz — Henrot's companion — who leads music label Tigersushi, and includes a text that Henrot co-authored with her friend, poet Jakob Bomberg. All combine in what becomes a strange cauldron of myths and thoughts on the state of the world.

Grosse Fatigue is a meditation on creation. Who knows if rap aficionados not used to such unusual clips will like it? Thirteen minutes recount the birth of the world and its risk of dying. What does our desire to make a picture of the world bring us to? In a predominantly philosophical manner, Henrot answers this question by overlapping and intersecting different computer pages on one screen. Among other things, she invents a new way of looking at what happens when we navigate different roads on the same desktop.

Sep 05, 2013 - Sep 15, 2013

Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 952 Queen Street West, Toronto ON