Viola, Bill (1951– )

US video artist. He has been a leading proponent of video as an important medium in contemporary art. His work includes videotapes, architectural video installments, electronic music, and pieces for television broadcast, and is known for precision and simplicity. His themes include cultural rituals as well as universal human rites of passage and are inspired by spiritual traditions from around the world.

Viola was awarded several fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts for work in video and has travelled extensively, documenting a variety of subjects, for example animals at the San Diego Zoo (1984), fire-walking ceremonies in Fiji (1984), and Native American archaeology and rock art (1987). He represented the USA at the Venice Biennale in 1995.

He was born in New York and received his bachelor's of fine arts from Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts in 1973. In 1980–81 he lived in Japan, where he studied Buddhism with a Zen master.

His work includes slow-motion video portraits and pictorial tableaux, in which changes in movement occur so slowly as to be barely perceptible; the slow motion, combined with the technique of rear projecting high-definition video on a flat screen mounted on a wall, gives these works the remarkable quality of moving photographs.