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Published in Time Out, October 2010
Narrative is but one softly spoken weapon in Fiona Tan’s disarming armoury, but she knows how to weave a magical tale or two. A short audio piece translates a Dutch fable about an Irish monk’s nine-year journey to ‘Brendan’s Isle’, a mystical, blessed rock, only to return home the minute he lands. Needless to say, no one ever finds it again - it’s a construct about mental space, rather than a physical place.
Related Exhibitions: Fiona Tan: Cloud Island and other new works
Published in Art in America, September 2010
Projection was one of three works featured in Tan’s recent solo show. Fittingly, it is also the first video that visitors encounter in “Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall,” an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery of seven films and video installations made over the past five years. Organized by senior curator Bruce Grenville, the show demonstrates Tan’s abiding interest in portraiture, her thoughtful interrogation of the genre’s traditional modes and limitations, and her inventive use of film and video technology to deepen our understanding of her subjects’ identities.
Published in The Herald , April 2010
Published in The Art Blog, March 2010
Both videos cannot be seen at the same time, the viewer must literally move from a symbolic past to a contemporary present, all while hearing words from history brought to life. Tan asks her viewer to inhabit a complex space, traversing time and space and consequently creating a multiplicity of new meanings.
Published in Amsterdam Weekly, August 2008
Published in RIBA Journal, October 2007
‘I am trying to do the impossible and answer the question, is it possible to imagine a world beyond east and west? Henry is my astronaut. He is in both worlds, in limbo.’ - Fiona Tan
http://www.ribajournal.com/index.php/feature/article/Brief_encounter23/
Published in Telegraph Magazine, 20 January 2007
Much of Tan’s work is concerned with remixing existing images in a manner that gives the result an ethnographic kick. Rediscovered photographic portraiture, for example, is the key to her video installation The Changeling
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/01/20/smfiona20.xml
Published in The Observer, 31 December 2006
Published in Time Out, October 18-25 2006
Published in The Independent, October 2006
Another video maker who knows how to grab our attention is the Indonesian artist Fiona Tan. Of the new works in her current show, two pieces stand out. The Changelingis a two-channel work in which, one by one, around 200 vintage sepia images of Japanese schoolgirls appear on the first screen while on a second screen, a single inscrutable face of a girl is picked out.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20061001/ai_n16761521
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