You’re sitting in front of a computer screen. Windows pop open. Then more windows. Files are dragged across a desktop background of the Milky Way. A hand with manicured nails reaches into a frame to touch a turtle or stroke a dead bird.
This is the chaos of Grosse Fatigue, the 13-minute video that basically blew up the art world in 2013.
Honestly, Camille Henrot did something most of us do every Tuesday afternoon—browsing too many tabs—and turned it into a masterpiece about the birth of the universe. It’s frantic. It’s exhausting. It’s brilliant.
The Smithsonian Binge That Started It All
In 2013, Henrot got a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. If you’ve never been, it’s not just a museum; it’s a massive, sprawling archive of everything. Skeletons, satellites, ancient pottery, botanical samples.
Henrot didn't just look at the stuff. She filmed it.
She went into the back rooms where the public isn't allowed. She filmed the metal cabinets and the white-gloved curators. But she didn't stop there. She mixed that high-brow institutional footage with stuff she found on YouTube and Google.
The result is Grosse Fatigue.
The title literally translates to "big fatigue" or "heavy exhaustion." It’s that specific feeling you get when you’ve been scrolling for four hours and your brain feels like mush, but you still haven't found the "answer" to whatever you were looking for.
Why the Silver Lion Was a Big Deal
When she showed this at the 55th Venice Biennale, she walked away with the Silver Lion. That’s a massive win. People loved it because it felt like the first piece of art that actually understood how we live now.
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We don't look at things one at a time anymore. We look at them in layers.
The Poetry of Overload
The backbone of the whole thing is a spoken-word poem. Henrot wrote it with Jacob Bromberg, and it’s performed by Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh.
It’s not some dry history lecture. It sounds like a hip-hop track mixed with a religious chant.
The poem mashes together:
- Scientific theories (Big Bang, quantum fluctuations).
- Religious myths (Christianity, Buddhism, Kabbalah).
- Indigenous oral traditions (Navajo, Inuit, Dogon).
It starts with "In the beginning..." and then just keeps going. It attempts to tell the story of the entire universe in thirteen minutes. It’s an impossible task, which is kind of the point.
The rhythm of the voice-over dictates how fast the windows pop up on the screen. As the poem gets faster, the desktop gets more crowded. You see a video of a guy washing a car, then a window showing a rare specimen of a bird, then a clip of a screen-saver.
It’s a "mise en abyme"—a story within a story within a story.
Is It Just "Internet Art"?
A lot of people label Grosse Fatigue as "Post-Internet art."
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Henrot herself is a bit skeptical of that term. She thinks "post" sounds old-fashioned. To her, the work is more about the human desire to categorize. We’ve been trying to "know everything" since the beginning of time.
The Smithsonian is just a physical version of a Google search.
One stores things in drawers; the other stores things in servers. Both are attempts to keep death at bay by preserving "information."
The Loneliness of the Desktop
There’s a weirdly personal vibe to the video. Because everything happens on a computer desktop, it feels private. You’re looking at someone’s digital workspace.
But what you’re seeing is the whole world.
It highlights the gap between our tiny, physical bodies and the infinite amount of data we can access. We can see images of the furthest galaxies while sitting in a dark room in our pajamas. That contrast is where the "fatigue" comes from.
Why You Should Care in 2026
You'd think a video from 2013 about "the internet" would feel dated by now. It doesn't.
If anything, Grosse Fatigue Camille Henrot feels more relevant today than it did a decade ago. Our lives have only become more layered. Our "desire to see and know everything"—as curator Massimiliano Gioni put it—has turned into a full-blown obsession.
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The work acts as a mirror. It shows us our own vanity. We think that by collecting and tagging and archiving everything, we can understand the "why" of the universe.
Spoiler alert: we can't.
Taking It All In
If you get the chance to see it in a gallery, do it. The scale makes a difference. Seeing those windows pop up on a massive projection is different than watching a thumbnail on your phone.
It’s a physical experience.
You feel the weight of the information. You feel the "grosse fatigue."
But you also feel the beauty of the attempt. There’s something deeply human about trying to fit the entire history of existence into a 13-minute video file. It’s a fool’s errand, but it’s a gorgeous one.
Actionable Insights for Art Lovers:
- Look for the layers: Next time you're browsing, notice how your brain jumps from a news article to a cat video to a work email. That's the "Henrot flow."
- Visit an archive: If you're in D.C., go to the Smithsonian. Look at the sheer volume of stuff. Realize that for every item on display, there are thousands more in the basement.
- Listen to the rhythm: Find the transcript of the poem. It’s a masterclass in syncretism—the blending of different beliefs.
The world is too big for one screen. Camille Henrot just proved it by trying to fit it all in anyway.