Fiona Tan (1966)
Perhaps the artist herself expressed it most succinctly when she said, 'I look at the way we look.'* Film and video artist Fiona Tan always returns to two elements in her work: cultural identity and the mechanisms of representation.** Born in Indonesia to a Chinese father and Scottish mother, Tan grew up in Melbourne and left Australia at the age of eighteen to study art in Europe – first in Hamburg, then in Amsterdam. She now lives and works in the Netherlands.
The artist gravitates towards archival image material such as anthropological documentaries. For her, these are 'mirrors': 'I'm looking for the images in which I can find myself.'** With inventively selected or altered film fragments, Tan builds an entirely new image library – not by manipulating the images to extreme lengths, but by organising them differently, shifting the focus in them, or with a small but well-placed alteration. Tan adds an element of concentration and transposes the images into a new context. She presents her films in the form of a spatial installation, sometimes involving multiple projection screens, and making the experience of her work an intense viewing experience that gives the viewer a grasp of existence in an unexpected way.
* J. Bremer, ‘Fiona Tan’, unlocked # 02 rabo kunstcollectie, Eindhoven 2005, p. 102
** q.v. ‘Fiona Tan zoekt naar spiegels’, VPRO-gids, 28.01.2003
