Fiona Tan. 80 Days Cooperating partners Sammlung Fotografie und Neue Medien, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and Siemens Arts Program Curators Dr. Inka Graeve Ingelmann (Sammlung Fotografie und Neue Medien, Pinakothek der Moderne) and Dr. Angelika Nollert (Siemens Arts Program) Catalogue "Fiona Tan: Vox Populi, Tokyo" will be published by Book Works "Fiona Tan. 80 Days" is an exhibition initiated by Siemens Arts Program and realised in cooperation with the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. In her work Fiona Tan strategically adopts the forms and techniques of photography, film, and video to produce an extraordinary portrait of our time. While the subjects of her work seem to vary widely there remains a constant engagement with the question of individual and cultural identity in the face of change and social flux. Adopting the tools of ethnologists, anthropologists, documentary photographers, and filmmakers, Tan combines archival documentary material, photos from third parties, and her own film sequences into striking sequences that smudge the boundaries between documentation and fiction and between how one sees oneself and is seen by others. Her exhibition in Munich now questions the significance of historical and contemporary photography as a possibility for archiving the world. Thus the film installation "Countenance" shows 200 full-length portraits of people living in Berlin, all arranged according to job categories. Since the people are shown standing still, the film breathes the aesthetic of a row of photographs. This black and white film is a deliberate reference to August Sander's folio work "People of the 20th Century". Fiona Tan transmutes this encyclopaedic approach into a sociological study of people in a city that is strongly coloured by the way East and West have grown together. Fiona Tan has developed her work entitled "Vox Populi" in three countries located in three different continents. In Norway, Australia, and Japan she collected amateur photographs from unidentified people, which she then standardised by employing the same format and frame so as to link them into a rhythmic structure resembling a tableau on the wall. The personal privacy captured in the individual photos is indicative of a collective need to hold on to certain moments in one's life. In this way the history and culture of a particular country is developed from the biographies of the individual people. The exhibition in Munich will be the first occasion on which all three "Vox Populi" pieces are presented together. A global citizen herself, Tan's concern with the authenticity of memory and cultural identity resonates in an international context. So it can be no surprise that the title "80 Days" alludes – tongue-in-cheek – to the expedition undertaken around the world in Jules Verne's novel Le "Tour du monde en 80 jours". Fiona Tan was born in Indonesia in 1966, raised in Australia, and attended art school in Netherlands where she continues to live and work. Her recent exhibition "Mirror Maker", which toured Europe in 2006/07, was short listed for the 2007 Deutsche Börse photography prize. Earlier solo exhibitions include retrospective exhibitions at the de Pont Foundation, Tilburg; Villa Arson, Nice; and Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Recent group exhibitions include Sujeto at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon, 2005; Istanbul Biennial 2003; ICP Triennial, New York; Documenta XI, Kassel; the 49th Venice Biennale and the Berlin Biennale, 2001. Pressekontakt: Pinakothek der Moderne Sabine Wedemeyer wedemeyer@pinakothek.de Tine Nehler nehler@pinakothek.de Fon: 0 89 / 2 38 05 - 280 Fax: 0 89 / 2 38 05 - 125 www.pinakothek.de Siemens AG - Siemens Arts Program Imke List imke.list@siemens.com T. 0 89 / 6 36 - 3 35 87 F. 0 89 / 6 36 - 3 36 15 www.siemensartsprogram.com