Fiona Tan at Lunds Konsthall

Lund Konsthall’s presentation of Fiona Tan’s art includes both newer and older work and is the largest to date in Sweden. The exhibition’s title speaks of difference and repetition, of the new and the recognizable.

Fiona Tan’s art asks questions that support different interpretations. How has western colonialism affected contemporary understandings of identity and belonging? How can archival material be used to articulate the exotic? What is portraiture today? How can notions such as subjectivity and time be portrayed in still and moving images? The exhibition at Lund Konsthall revolves around two recent works, the video installation A Lapse of Memory from 2007 and a Swedish-language version of the voice and image installation The Changeling from 2006/07. Fiona Tan asks herself and the viewer how a character and a story can be created and understood. Who is Henry, the old man in A Lapse of Memory who inexplicably inhabits the orientalist Royal Pavilion in Brighton? Are we to assume that the uniformly styled Japanese schoolgirls in The Changeling become different apparitions of the narrator, here impersonated by the celebrated Swedih actress Anita Björk, who in turn appears to become both daughter, mother and grandmother?

Fiona Tan wants us to see and listen to the characters and their stories. She stages that fleeting incommensurability of language and image that is usually called the audiovisual. What we hear and what we see is not necessarily fused into a seamless whole. The voiceover does not always add truth to the picture; the image does not always show evidence for the text.

24. november - 27. januar 2008

Mårtenstorget 3, 220 02 Lund, Sverige

web site:www.lundskonsthall.se/

Tuesday-Sunday 12 am-5 pm, Thursday 12 am-8 pm, Saturday 10 am-5 pm