Recommended Viewing: Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas studied art at University of Cape Town's School of Fine Art, and grew up in Kuilsriver, Cape Town. She left South Africa in 1976, aged 23, to study in Holland, Netherlands. There she explored topics that have still informed her work – sex, politics, race and death. A Lancet Journal of Psychiatry Article (Rodney Bolt, 2010) comments that her 2010 retrospective exhibition “The Image as Burden” gives a sense of the artist’s spirit sagging under the weight of countless questions.

As a psychologist who has worked with PTSD in South Africa, I find Dumas's art echoes the trauma of South Africa in many paintings. Her daughter as a little girl in “The Painter”, has one hand blood red, the other blue; her eyes are in shadow, making her vulnerable and guilty. Her image of Osama Bin Laden appears gentle-eyed and engaging. Perceptual tensions play throughout the exhibition, with works grouped according to specific series such as “strippinggirls” that are confrontational, sexually charged oil paintings in which she uses polaroids taken in Amsterdam’s red-light district. Dumas says that her best works are “erotic displays of mental confusion”.

“The Painter”, 1994, Marlene Dumas

You can read more about Marlene Dumas in her 2019 interview with Hilton Als - www.interviewmagazine.com/art/marlene-dumas-hilton-alsI

Images and video used with permission. The artist’s opinions are their own.