Marlene Dumas, United Europe

“It’s not the fallen woman
nor the temptress I am after.
It’s not the babydolls I want
nor the Amazons. It’s everything
mixed together to form
a true bastard race.”

Wall text by Marlene Dumas in Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden, Room 7, Tate Modern, London, 2015

Marlene Dumas, a contemporary South African artist, born in 1953, is renowned for her emotionally charged and psychologically profound artworks. Over the past four decades, her paintings have delved into challenging themes such as sexuality, love, death, shame, political oppression, identity, and feminism. Dumas is particularly acclaimed for her haunting portraiture, which she creates not from life but from an extensive collection of images accumulated throughout her career. This collection includes photographs of friends and family as well as public figures like Naomi Campbell and Princess Diana, allowing her to explore a wide array of subjects through her art. Marlene Dumas’ approach to painting involves a distinct use of translucent layers and gestural brushstrokes, emphasizing the fluidity of identity and the complexities of representation. Her artworks reflect her deep engagement with the medium of painting itself, as she articulates a nuanced understanding of its potential and limitations. She has expressed that no painting can exist without the tension between its figurative content and its material form, capturing the “pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it’s not.” In addition to her paintings, Marlene Dumas has also produced limited edition prints that extend her exploration of these themes. Her prints often mirror the intense emotional depth and thematic concerns of her paintings, contributing to a comprehensive oeuvre that challenges and captivates viewers. Rather than seeking to depict her subjects accurately, Dumas aims to capture and convey their emotional states or underlying psychological conditions, making her artworks not just portraits but profound investigations into human emotion and identity.

Marlene Dumas, United Europe