Art Madrid'23 – FIONA TAN AND HER TRIP TO THE FAR EAST

Portrait of Fiona Tan

 

 

Fiona Tan, born in Sumatra in 1966, she is an audiovisual artist of recognized prestige worldwide. In 1988 she moved to the Netherlands. She’s origins, of Chinese father and Australian mother, make that she herself considers a "professional foreigner". This idea is present in her work. Her personal and strongly marked style goes from photography to film to video art. The alternation of these techniques shows a reflection of colonial society in the East. The artist focuses especially on the myths and legends of this postcolonial and globalized culture.

 

 

Fiona Tan Desoriente (Disorient), 2009. Installation of digital video of two channels

 

 

Tan, created this magnificent work of art for the Dutch pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, taking advantage of the fact that the city appears in the filming. In fact it plays a very important role since the documentary reflects how Venice was one of the strategic points for the realization of the trips in the XI and XIV towards the Far East. It evokes the dream of a "Great Far East" described by Marco Polo as a source of inspiration for so many stories and works of art.

 

 

Installation of Fiona Tan, Collecting and classifying, beyond the document

 

 

In the installation of Desoriente, as in others that he has exposed, the main work is two screens where narrates his particular vision on the subject to deal in question. With a masculine voice, which whispers fragments of the voyages of Marco Polo, this confronted vision of the East is completed. In one of the screens, the larger of the two, shows an anachronistic succession of objects and thematic memories, facing that screen images of the contemporary life of the Asian continent.

 

 

Rise and Fall, 2009, two-channel video installation. Photo by Per Kristiansen, Stockholm. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

 

 

The juxtaposition of these two screens, apparently without anything in common but intimately connected, suggests to the viewer a certain sense of disorientation. The artist transforms the cultural memory and the modern myth and transports it to our days with a reconstruction of the Marco Polo’s Asia. You can enjoy this installation until March 19.

 

 

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.