Christian Boltanski's 'Chance' at Venice Biennale 2011

For the 2011 Venice Biennale, the French Pavilion presented Christian Boltanski's exhibition 'Chance,' curated by Jean-Hubert Martin. The show explored the ambiguity of luck, fate, and randomness, contrasting with Boltanski's earlier funereal installation 'Personnes' at Monumenta 2010. While 'Personnes' evoked death with a crane grabbing clothes, 'Chance' focused on birth, featuring portraits of newborns from a Polish newspaper, echoing his earlier work 'Les Suisses morts' (1990) which used obituary photos. The installation included real-time counters of global births and deaths, a moving walkway, and a slot-machine-like game where visitors could try to reconstruct a face from three mismatched parts, winning the artwork if successful. The exhibition was accompanied by a website (boltanski-chance.com) for online play.