 Tacita Dean photographed byOliver Mark, Berlin 2012 | |
| Born | Tacita Charlotte Dean 1965 (age 59–60) Canterbury,Kent, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Falmouth University Slade School of Fine Art |
| Known for | Conceptual art,installation art |
Tacita Charlotte DeanCBE,RA (born 1965) is a Britishvisual artist who works primarily in film. She was a nominee for theTurner Prize in 1998, won theHugo Boss Prize in 2006, and was elected to theRoyal Academy of Arts in 2008.[1] She lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Los Angeles, California.[2][3][4]
Dean was born inCanterbury, Kent.[5][6] Her mother is named Jenefer and her father was Joseph Dean, a lawyer who studied classics atMerton College, Oxford.[7] She has a sister named Antigone and a brother, the architectPtolemy Dean.[8] Her grandfather wasBasil Dean, the founder ofEaling Studios.[9]
Dean was educated atKent College, Canterbury.[5] After a foundation year in Canterbury,[10] she studied atFalmouth University, graduating in 1988.[5] From 1990 to 1992, Dean studied for a master's degree at theSlade School of Fine Art.[5]
In 1995, Dean was included inGeneral Release: Young British Artists held at the XLVIVenice Biennale.[11] She is one of the "key names",[12] along withJake and Dinos Chapman,Gary Hume,Sam Taylor-Wood,Fiona Banner andDouglas Gordon,[12] of theYoung British Artists (YBAs).[12][13] Her work actually had little in common with the prominent YBAs,Damien Hirst andTracey Emin.[14]
In 1997, Dean moved to London. That same year she began to exhibit splices of magnetic tape cut the length required to document the duration of the sound indicated, such as a raven's cry. In 2001 she was given a solo show entitledTacita Dean: Recent films and Other Works atTate Britain.[15] For the season 2004/2005 in theVienna State Opera Dean designed the large scale picture (176 sqm) "Play as Cast" as part of the exhibition seriesSafety Curtain, conceived bymuseum in progress.[16]
In 2000, Dean relocated to Berlin,[17] where she has since been living in the city'sCharlottenburg district and maintaining a studio inWestend.[18] She was anartist in residence at theGetty Research Institute in 2014 and at theMenil Collection in 2024.[19]
Dean is a founding member of savefilm.org and campaigns to save the medium of film.[4]
Dean is best known for her work in16 mm film, although she utilises a variety of media including drawing, photography and sound. Her films often employ long takes and steady camera angles to create a contemplative atmosphere. She has also published several pieces of her own writing, which she refers to as 'asides,' which complement her visual work. Since the mid-1990s her films have not included commentary, but are instead accompanied by often understated optical sound tracks.
The sea was a persistent theme in Dean's work, especially during the 1990s. During that decade, she explored the maritime misadventures ofDonald Crowhurst, an amateur English sailor whose ambition to enter a race to solo circumnavigate the globe ended in deception, existential crisis and, eventually, tragedy.[20] Dean has made a number of films and blackboard drawings relating to the Crowhurst story, exploiting the metaphorical richness of such motifs as the ocean, lighthouses and shipwrecks. Re-turning to her attraction with the sea,Amadeus (swell consopio) was made for theFolkestone Triennial (three-year art show) in 2008.[21]
In 1997, Dean made an audio work based on her futile effort to find the submerged artworkSpiral Jetty byRobert Smithson in theGreat Salt Lake of Utah.[22]
Sound Mirrors (1999) takes its name from the tracking devices built during the 1920s and 1930s and planted in the Kent countryside to detect incoming German aircraft.[23]
In 2000, Dean was awarded a one-yearGerman Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship to Berlin, where she moved that year with her partner, artist Mathew Hale.[24] She devoted attention to the architecture and cultural history of Germany, making films of such iconic structure as thePalast der Republik.Fernsehturm, is a 44-minute film set in the revolving cafe of theEast Berlin television tower, completed in 1969 on Alexanderplatz. Other projects have concerned important figures in post-war German cultural history, such asW. G. Sebald andJoseph Beuys.
Recent films are about artists and thinkers of the last fifty years and featureMario Merz,Merce Cunningham,Leo Steinberg,Julie Mehretu,Claes Oldenburg, andCy Twombly.[25] For example,Craneway Event (2008) is a film about Cunningham working on something with his dancers over three afternoons on site.[26]
In 2006, Dean shotKodak, a movie in aKodak factory in eastern France – the last one in Europe to produce 16-mm film stock. A few weeks after she visited, it closed for good.[24]
In 2013, Dean exhibitedJG, a 26-minute 35 mm film in colour and black and white at the Frith Street Gallery in London.[27] The film returns to Dean's fascination with the famous land artworkSpiral Jetty byRobert Smithson and her friendship with the science-fiction writerJ. G. Ballard. During the film, the viewer also hears excerpts from the writings and correspondence of Ballard as well as of Smithson, all read by actorJim Broadbent.[28]
In 2001 Dean publishedFloh ("flea" in German), a book in two parts that used found photographs from the flea markets of Europe and America.[29] Dean said ofFloh: "I do not want to give these images explanations: descriptions by the finder about how and where they were found, or guesses as to what stories they might or might not tell. I want them to keep the silence of the fleamarket; the silence they had when I found them; the silence of the lost object."[29] Similarly, in 2002 Dean createdCzech Photos (1991–2002), a series of over 326 unedited photographs presented in a box for intimate engagement. The black and white photographs show a city in the moments before radical change, already somehow out of date the second they were taken.[30]Washington Cathedral (2002) is a series of more than 130 found postcards from the first half of the last century showing various imagined versions of the cathedral in Washington, D.C. before it was completed.Palindrome is a newspaper project celebrating the palindromic date 20.02 2002, which was inspired by numbers painted byMarcel Broodthaers on a beam in his studio. In 2005, Dean began work on a series of found postcards of trees, which she transformed by painting out all the background detail with white gouache.
In 2007, Dean metCy Twombly briefly in Rome, and she eventually gave lectures, contributed to the catalog of his 2008Tate Modern exhibition, and wrote about his 1975 oil pastel and collage on paper,Pan. Her installationGAETA (fifty photographs plus one) was made in 2008 in Twombly's house and studio in the Italian town of Gaeta; the images were first published as a photo essay in the catalog for Twombly's 2009 exhibition atMumok in Vienna. She made a short 2011 film about the artist, "Edwin Parker" (Twombly's given name). In 2021, her show "Sigh Sigh Sigh" in Rome featured a series of works relating to Twombly.[19]
Dean has undertaken commissions for London's formerMillennium Dome, theSadler's Wells Theatre, and forCork, Ireland, as part of that city'sEuropean City of Culture celebrations. She has also completed residencies at theSundance Institute, theWexner Center for the Arts,Columbus, U.S., and theDeutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Berlin
In 2011, Dean was the 12th artist commissioned by the Unilever Series to create a unique artwork for the Turbine Hall of theTate Modern.[31] The result,FILM, was an 11-minute silent film shot on 35 mm film that was projected onto a 13-meter screen and sought "not only to invigorate debate about the threat film is under but also to stand as a testament to the distinctive qualities of this unique medium."[32]
Following her 1996 filmDisappearance at Sea, Dean was nominated for theTurner Prize in 1998. She has since been awarded the Aachen Art Prize (2002),Hugo Boss Prize (2006),[33] and the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009),[34] among others. In 2011,Blake Gopnik listed Dean among "The 10 Most Important Artists of Today".[35]
She was appointedOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to British art overseas.[36]
Dean was the recipient of the 2019 TenTen artist commission,[37] and the 2019Cherry Kearton Medal and Award.[38]
Dean is married to artist Matthew Hale. They have a son.[17]
Tacita Dean: Blind Folly. October 11, 2024 through August 19, 2025.The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas[39]
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