פיונה טאן
フィオナ·タン
ФИОНА ТАН
فيونا تان

Geography of Time

source: contemporaryartdaily
The artist Fiona Tan is among the outstanding artists of the present. The survey “Geography of Time” focuses on major works from her film oeuvre – for example the double projection “Rise and Fall” – as well as on the latest developments in her work, which increasingly takes the form of installation environments.
“With this project, the MMK continues its policy and strategy to present mid-career exhibitions of international artists with new works at its core, and to invite the artists to relate their work to the architecture of the museum”, says Prof Susanne Gaensheimer, the director of the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst.
Fiona Tan has transformed the ground floor of the MMK 1 into a parcours in which video projections, audio and sculptural works join in a concentrated reflection on the individual in an increasingly disjointed globalized world. Fundamental questions on the identity of man in the twenty-first century arise in the process: how do we see ourselves, and what determines our perspective on the ‘other’? In filmically striking images and installations, Tan addresses how our own memories influence our perceptions of the past, present and future. In her imagery, the boundaries between personal and collective memory, interior and exterior, fiction and reality dissolve.
Time, memory and identity – central themes in Fiona Tan’s oeuvre since the beginning of her artistic career – are also the leitmotifs pursued by the seven works on view at the MMK 1. In recent years the artist has expanded her work from a concentration on film and photographic media to include object-based installations. “With interventions in the architecture as well as object installations and archive materials, her filmic worlds extend into the exhibition space. MMK is excited to be able to present this new development in Fiona Tan’s oeuvre to a broad international public”, explains Peter Gorschlüter, curator of the exhibition.
The work “1 to 87” (2014), an expansive model railway landscape spreading out to fill the central hall of the MMK, forms the prelude. The work’s title refers to the scale of 1:87 determining the work’s dimensions. If at first sight the scenery looks idyllic, on closer inspection this impression begins to crumble. The viewer becomes a witness to circumstances that seem at odds with the apparent innocence of the panorama: as occupants of an allotment garden harvest vegetables, for example, a train crash occurs. Tan juxtaposes the tranquil character of model landscapes with a complex reality no longer describable by means of simple explanatory models.
Her film triptych “Ghost Dwellings I–III” (2014), on the other hand, focuses on the ecological and economic consequences of globalization. Tan visited three places where decay and devastation are visible: Cork (Ireland), which has suffered the consequences of the real estate bubble that ran rampant from 2008 onward, the once-thriving automotive capital Detroit (U.S.A.), which gradually slid into bankruptcy, and the exclusion zone in Fukushima (Japan) established in 2011 after the nuclear accident. In these landscapes, the artist looked for signs of recovery, a phenomenon known as “aftermath”, a term referring to new growth after the harvest is over. The artist contrasts her filmic portraits of these melancholic sites with a domestic environment that seems to be expecting the return of its mysterious inhabitant at any moment.
This consideration of the human in a time of uncertain futures weaves through much of Tan’s recent output. In her work “Apocalypse” (2014), Tan uses a camera to scan scenes of the medieval tapestry “L’Apocalypse d’Angers” (1373–83) on display in the Château d’Angers in France. Measuring nearly five metres in height and more than a hundred in length, the cycle is thought to be the largest extant tapestry work of the Middle Ages. The artist supplemented the shots with texts running through the images describing various details of the cycle. Yet the passing letters are also reminiscent of the unceasing information stream of news and stock tickers, forming a connection to events of our present, manifested through the data of share prices, casualty figures and referendum results.
The dream of a utopian idyll and the striving for happiness are encountered in an audio work inspired by an ancient legend. “Brendan’s Isle” (2010) relates the adventures of the Irish monk Saint Brendan, who in the sixth century set out on a journey by sea in a fishing boat, to find paradise on earth, which he reached after seven years of travel. Although the precise location of the island discovered by Saint Brendan was never determined, it was marked on early nautical charts. In Tan’s re-telling, the story opens the imagination, alluding to the invisible.
Alongside this examination of the human subject within our contemporary landscapes, Tan also devotes her attention to the individual by exploring the intertwinement of personal identity and cultural imprint, for example in “Rise and Fall” (2009), “Nellie” (2013) and “Diptych” (2006–11). In her filmic installations, seeing and being seen, gaze and return gaze intermesh and merge to form a whole.
For “Rise and Fall“, Fiona Tan filmed at Niagara Falls, in Belgium and the Netherlands. A younger and an older woman seem to inhabit the same space, but without ever coming into contact. There is no telling whether the older woman is remembering her younger self, the young woman is envisioning her future self, or the two exist independently of one another in the present. Connecting the filmic double portrait of the two women are images of water in different states of motion. The large-scale double projection offers a meditation on time and memories inaccuracies, pointing at the charged field between past and future, memory and oblivion.
Transporting the viewer to a very different time and place, the video installation “Nellie” is inspired by the life of Cornelia van Rijn, Rembrandt’s illegitimate daughter, who at the age of sixteen emigrated to Batavia (present-day Jakarta). Little is known about Cornelia’s life; no portraits of her are known to exist. But this omission from the history books was for the artist an opportunity to give her imagination free reign. With this unsettling work Tan offers a touching homage to a forgotten woman, whose ‘suspended history’ becomes activated again.
For “Diptych“ Fiona Tan made filmic portraits of fifteen pairs of identical twins on the Swedish island of Gotland over a period of five years – from 2006 to 2011. As Tan herself says: “This project started out as a study into synchronicity and duration. I was interested in the visual measurement of time. Paradoxically I have come to see this work more as an investigation into sameness, into that which is constant and unchanging.“
The works are staged in a fascinating exhibition architecture designed by the artist. The roller-door-like structure can be understood as reminiscent of self-storage unit buildings, but perhaps also as an allusion to the freeports for art and luxury goods emerging all over the world, or as a reflection on the themes of transit, boundary dissolution and the loss of roots and identity.
Fiona Tan was born in Pekanbaru (Indonesia) in 1966. She lives and works in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Los Angeles (U.S.A.). Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows worldwide. In 2002 she took part in the documenta 11 in Kassel. In 2009 she represented the Netherlands at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (Norway), the MUDAM, Luxembourg, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Israel).
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source: fionatannl

Fiona Tan (Pekan Baru, 1966)

Fiona Tan trained in Hamburg and Amsterdam and works primarily with lens-based media. She is best known for her skillfully crafted video and film installations, in which explorations of memory, time, history and the role of the visual are key.

Fiona Tan has had solo exhibitions in musea and galleries worldwide including the MCA Chicago, De Pont Foundation, Tilburg, Vancouver Artgallery, the Sackler Galleries, Washington, the Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland. Tan won the J.C. van Lanschot Prize for Sculpture in 1998, the Infinity Award for Art in 2004 and was awarded the DAAD Berlin scholarship in 2000/2001. She has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the Artes Mundi Prize. She is represented in many international public and private collections including the Tate Modern, London; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Schaulager, Basel, the New Museum, New York and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Fiona Tan lives and works in Amsterdam.
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source: frithstreetgallery

b. 1966, Pekan Baru, Indonesia

Fiona Tan works within the contested territory of representation: how we represent ourselves and the mechanisms that determine how we interpret the representation of others. Photography and film – made by herself, by others, or a combination of both – are her mediums; research, classification and the archive, her strategies. Her skillfully crafted, moving and intensely human works, expanded film and video installations, explore history and time and our place within them.
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source: theartblog

Fiona Tan explores storytelling, memory, and the part they play in the formation of identity throughout this exhibition of five video installations, various associated sketches and one single-channel video. Rise and Fall (2009), elongated projections onto two large, side-by-side screens, is a wordless meditation, set to music, of a woman no longer young but still conscious of her looks; she was clearly a beauty in her youth. As the video proceeds we gather that the young woman pictured on the second screen is the memory of her younger self. They often move through domestic activities (sleeping, bathing, dressing) in parallel; this is inter-cut with scenes of violently rushing water (shot at Niagra Falls, it turns out). It’s a hackneyed metaphor – the water’s endless surging as an image of time’s relentless uni-directionality – but in Tan’s hands that doesn’t seem to matter; she creates extraordinarily emotional work out of simple stories and well-worn themes. This is true of all of her work; it’s achieved with such skill and restraint that the limitations of her material never bother us, but echo enough of our own thoughts that we are carried away by them. The large, single screen installation of A Lapse of Memory (2007) shows the often puzzling and slightly obsessive, daily routines of a man who, we’re told, is losing his memory; it is set, inexplicably, in the lush but abandoned Georgian Chinoiserie of the Brighton Pavillion. The narrator offers conflicting stories of the aging man who, forgetting his past, can neither confirm or reject them. Henry is waiting for a story he can make his home. The video posits memory as essential to the construction of self, and Henry (or Eng Lee, the protagonist of the alternative narrative), unable to retain his own story, may be losing himself to tales told by others.
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source: dutchartevents

Fiona Tan is internationally regarded for her films, videos and photographs and was highly acclaimed for her participation in the 2009 Venice Biennale’s Dutch Pavilion. Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall features video installations and photographic series produced by this Amsterdam-based artist during the past three years. This major exhibition is an unprecedented opportunity for North American audiences to view Tan’s powerful explorations of identity and belonging in a world increasingly shaped by global culture.
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source: contarconelfutboles

Fiona Tan, que vive y trabaja en Ámsterdam, se dio a conocer a través de una serie de obras que partían de imágenes de archivo y filmoteca, con las que cuestionaba al observador y lo observado y ponía en entredicho lo asumido sobre el pasado colonial. También ha explorado el retrato en varios de sus trabajos, combinando el análisis de su contexto histórico, artístico y sociológico con una investigación sobre la manera en que influye el tiempo en nuestra percepción de los retratados.

Las últimas obras que ha realizado se centran en cómo se relaciona en nuestra mente la memoria con las imágenes y hasta qué punto puede ser inexacta —y aun así creativa— la memoria. Tan muestra asimismo en toda su producción un interés constante por las motivaciones del viajero o del explorador.

La exposición Punto de partida se estructura en torno a tres grandes vídeo-instalaciones: A Lapse of Memory (Un lapso de memoria), News from the near future (Noticias del futuro cercano) y Thin Cities (Ciudades diluidas). El tema central de la muestra es la idea de hacer un viaje —como viajero o como inmigrante— en el tiempo o en el espacio. Como indica su título, estos trabajos están relacionados con la idea de la vista atrás, pero también con mirar hacia el futuro.

Punto de partida tiene además un significado especial en el CAAC de Sevilla, dado que en su sede, el Monasterio de la Cartuja, el peso de la historia es innegable, entre otras cosas por la relación con el descubrimiento de América. Cristóbal Colón preparó en esta Cartuja el segundo viaje a América, que dio inicio a la expansión colonial europea a gran escala.

Fiona Tan ha participado en numerosas exposiciones internacionales, entre ellas las 11 Documenta de Kassel y las Bienales de São Pablo, Estambul, Sidney y Yokohama. En 2009 representó a los Países Bajos en la Bienal de Venecia. Su obra está presente en muchas colecciones internacionales tanto públicas como privadas, como la Tate Modern de Londres, el Stedelijk Museum de Ámsterdam, el New Museum de Nueva York o el Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, que ha adquirido recientemente la instalación multicanal ‘Thin Cities’.
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source: rtvees

Fiona Tan nació en 1966 en Indonesia pero vive y trabaja entre Amsterdam y Berlín. Su obra, que versa sobre la contemplación, sobre nuestra posición a la hora de mirar y ser mirados tiene una mirada limpia y nítida que fija su objetivo de manera inquisitoria. Acercándose insultantemente a sus motivos, la artista fija primeros planos sobre personas.

Fiona Tan estudia planteamientos centrados en la objetividad y la subjetividad. Vive entre estas dos posturas, la inocencia y frescura de la mirada objetiva y la visión contaminada e interesada de la subjetividad.

Tan trabaja dentro del territorio en disputa de la representación:. Fotografía y cine – hechos por ella misma, por otros, o una combinación de ambos – son los medios, la investigación, la clasificación y el archivo, sus estrategias.

El Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC), con sede en el Monasterio de la Cartuja deSevilla, presenta hasta el 24 de junio la exposición Punto de partida de la artista Fiona Tan(Indonesia, 1966), considerada una de las creadoras contemporáneas más importantes del ámbito fílmico y videográfico. Tan, que por primera vez expone individualmente en España y muestra en primicia su obra titulada Seven.
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source: art-ba-ba

– 1966年出生于佩坎巴鲁。目前在阿姆斯特丹生活和工作

– 费奥纳·谭致力于几个有争议的表现领域：我们如何表现自己以及决定我们如何解读他人表现的机制。摄影作品和电影——她自己、其他人或者二者结合制作的——都是她所用的媒介；研究、分类并归档，她的手法是熟练地处理感人的、具有强烈人文气息的作品、扩展电影和录像装置，探索了历史和时间以及我们在其中的地位。

费奥纳·谭的《起源》于2008年在阿姆斯特丹国立博物馆展出。2009年5月至9月，艺术家的大型作品展计划在瑞士阿劳的阿尔高美术馆展出——此次展览将在下半年前往温哥华艺术画廊巡展。最近的重要群展包括：2005年在里昂当代美术馆；2003年伊斯坦布尔双年展；纽约ICP三年展；第十一届卡塞尔文献展；四十九届威尼斯双年展和2001年柏林双年展。费奥纳·谭于2003年成为第一届曼迪艺术奖终选候选人。

费奥纳·谭被蒙德里安艺术基金会选为2009年第五十三届威尼斯双年展荷兰代表。
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source: artnetde

Manchen Präsentationen auf der diesjährigen Biennale von Venedig haftet die Aura des Musealen an. Etwa im Pavillon der USA, wo autoritativ die Einzelgestalt Bruce Naumans steht. Dafür überrascht Steve McQueen im Britischen Pavillon mit einer subtilen Parabel auf das Kunstereignis selbst, Fiona Tan im Niederländischen mit einer bildgewaltigen Untersuchung über die ideologische Potenz von Bild und Wort. Anne Haun ließ sich begeistern.