This Reader, edited and introduced by noted art historian and critic Gilda Williams, gathers the key critical writings across the artist’s essential works as explored through the lens of art history, post-colonial theory, film analysis, and more. Catalogue essays and exhibition reviews on individual works are set alongside Tan’s own substantial body of writing: essays, letters, scripts, project notes, as well as discussions of other artists’ work, from Chantal Akerman to Jeff Wall.
“Everything looks strange and new through Fiona Tan’s pensive eyes. That is one of the great gifts of this international artist, daughter of Chinese and Australian parents, born in Indonesia and based in the Netherlands. She seems to be always coming upon each place for the first time. And soon a voice begins to comment on the enigma of arriving in this land of the angels: perhaps we are to think of it as a vision of the afterlife?” —Laura Cumming inThe Guardian, December 2018
Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019) was a Nigerian curator, author, university lecturer, and from 2011 to 2018 director at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Unforgotten is Documenta 11, which he directed in 2006, but the highlight of his curatorial work is considered to be the 2015 Venice Biennale, which the press described as “an uninhibited, sovereign anthology of global contemporary art, with a strong emphasis on politically and socially motivated positions.” In the States, he has served as associate curator at the International Center of Photography in New York and as Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2005–2009. In 2010 and 2011 he was Joanne Cassulo Fellow of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2018 Okwui Enwezor was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.Saskia Bos is a Dutch curator and exhibition organizer. From 1984 to 2005 she was artistic director lĂ.