TACITA DEAN
ROYOUX, JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
Dean's compulsion to archive forgotten fragments of history is perhaps best captured in FLOH (2002), a collection of photographs she discovered in flea markets across Europe and America holiday snaps or banal occurrences retrieved and preserved for the future. Other works include a Jukebox (2000) filled with ambient sound recorded around the world on the eve of the new millennium; views of a changing Berlin filmed from the revolving Fernsehturm television tower (Fernsehturm, 2001); and the sounds of a frustrated attempt to follow directions (as misleading as they are meticulous) to find Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in Utah's Great Salt Lake (Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty, 1997). Dean's work has been presented at museums and galleries throughout the world (including Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and ARC / Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) as well as in major international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (2003 and 2005). Her films have also been screened at the Venice and Rotterdam international film festivals.
