FIONA TAN - Mirror Maker

FIONA TAN (1966-)

Fiona Tan, an artist who was born in Indonesia in 1966, grew up in Australia, and now lives in the Netherlands, has attracted international attention since the 1990s with her films and video projects. Her monumental work Correction, which deals with American prisons, was shown in the most important museums of the United States in 2004-2005. Fiona Tan’s works are mostly self-portraits and portraits of individuals and groups from various cultural backgrounds and social strata. Her work thereby oscillates between the poles of documentation and fiction, biography and imagination, and is based on the central recognition that the camera is not a neutral instrument for recording reality, but an “agent provocateur” whose presence is what provokes and motivates the reactions of those being filmed. The title Mirror Maker that Fiona Tan chose for this book refers to a fantastical story by the Italian writer Primo Levi. The story centers on the mirror as an instrument for recognizing the world and oneself.
The elaborately designed book Mirror Maker brings together important works by Fiona Tan from the last eight years and appears on the occasion of a traveling exhibition bearing the same title. It will be shown in 2006-2007 in Brandt’s Klædefabrik in Odense, Denmark, in the Bergen Art Museum in Norway, in the Landesgalerie in Linz, Austria, and in the Pori Art Museum in Finland.

Authors: Dag Erik Elgin, Martin Hochleitner, Thorsten Sadowsky