Tacita Dean : Antigone

Kunstmuseum Basel Gegenwart hosts the Swiss premiere of Antigone (2018), Tacita Dean's (b. 1965) most complex work to date. The presentation of the hourlong, anamorphic 35mm film is contextualized by other films, photographs, photogravures, and chalk drawings of the British-European artist. Antigone revolves around the name 'Antigone' and how it resonates, not only in Greek literary history, but also in the artist's own life. Antigone is the name of Dean's older sister so was one of the first words the artist ever learnt. 'Antigone' is also the eponymous heroine in the Theban trilogy of plays by the Greek tragedian Sophocles, which led Dean to intertwine her own story with the mythological cosmic order of classical antiquity. Ever since her first encounter with the myth of King Oedipus, Dean had wondered about what happens in the interval during which the blind exiled ruler, attended by his daughter and sister Antigone, wanders the wilderness. The screening of Antigone is complemented by a small collection of works by Dean that closely relate to this film, as well as a recent large-scale blackboard drawing, Chalk Fall (2018) and slate works, which include a recent drawing, Cynthia Teeming'Cynthia being a full moon'taken from a line in Metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell's poem, Eyes and Tears. The exhibition continues with an installation of a group of short 16mm films shown together for the first time: Ear on a Worm (2017) was made in relation to Leonard Cohen's song Bird on a Wire. Driving around Los Angeles, Dean often started to incant the song's opening lines when seeing birds sitting on the multitude of telegraph wires that straddle the city. The challenge was to film a bird for the full 3 minutes and 28 seconds length of the song. Exhibition: Kunstmuseum Basel, Gegenwart, Basel, Switzerland (28.08.2021 - 09.01.2022).