Tacita Dean
Tacita Dean uses temporality as both medium and material in her art, drawing our attention to what we fail to notice and all that might be about to slip away.
Image credit: Tacita Dean, Exceptional Study for 'Threshold for Purgatory' (detail), 2023, coloured pencil on hand- printed C-print on Fuji Velvet paper mounted on paper. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris and Los Angeles © the artist
Two women, five decades between them. They sit together at a cloth-covered table. They lean toward each other. Behind them, a patterned tapestry. A vase filled with white flowers. The scene glimmers with a jewel-like intensity, as if we are being alerted to something vital and important. As if this exchange, so unremarkable on the surface, is a conduit for a connection we can’t see so much as we can feel in our bodies. A transfer of energy. The older woman’s face is creased, but her eyes are bright. She’s telling a story about how she came to be an artist.
“I think it was because I had a great sense of smell,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “I could smell a butterfly when it first left its cocoon. I caught it and pinned it to the wall because it was so beautiful. And this was the biggest sin I ever committed in my life.”
The camera drops, taking in long fingers that curl around a teacup, shadows that move across a wall. The expressions that traverse the younger woman’s face: first adoration, then amusement, then delight at the candour of this response. Her radical generosity. The shadows change shape. As the conversation unfurls and moves backwards and forwards, we, the viewers, are carried along with it.
I’m running late to a media preview at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) for the largest exhibition in the southern hemisphere dedicated to Tacita Dean. The renowned British artist has been making her quietly extraordinary ... Subscribe to read this article in full
