Marlene Dumas
…They are looking for Meaning as if it was a Thing. As if it was a girl, required to take her panty off. As if she would want to do so, as soon as the true interpreter comes along. As if there was something to take off.
Marlene Dumas via The Artwork of Misunderstanding, 1999
Marlene Dumas (1953, South Africa) is widely regarded as one of the most influential painters working today. Over the past four decades, she has continuously probed the complexities of identity and representation in her work. Her paintings and drawings, often devoted to depictions of the human form, are typically culled from a vast archive of images collected by the artist, including art historical materials, mass media sources, and personal snapshots of friends and family. Dumas’s works reframe and re-contextualize her subjects, exploring the ambiguous and shifting boundaries between public and private selves.
