2017-2019
HD video with sound
24 minutes
Variable installation
This piece was commissioned by Public Art Agency Sweden for the exhibition Extracts from a Future History, curated by Lisa Rosendahl.
The artist thinks of images of Mars as a death mask of Earth, captured millions of years in the future, yet witnessed in the present. Compelled by photo- graphs from NASA’s expeditions depicting Mars’ topography, Tan senses how the planet’s dry lake beds, undulating sand dunes, and horizon could be our own. Their striking familiarity transports her to the desert terrain of the American Southwest where she was raised. She bounces her poetic speculation off of a scientist responsible for key instruments gauging water and atmosphere on Mars.
A road trip through the desert frames questions around climate and extinction. Yet the deeper concern is with unraveling photographic meaning in relation to the Mars images, through the artist’s alternative analysis of Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. Barthes’ seminal text on photography pivots around an image of the author’s deceased, beloved mother as a child in what is known as the Winter Garden photograph. My Pictures of You offers a thought-experiment: replace Barthes’ mother for “mother” Earth. Despite the video’s bleak terrain, it manages to transform its own pessimism into a joyful affirmation of earthbound existence.
Exhibition History
Artists' Film International, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2020My Pictures of You, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA, 2020
My Pictures of You, Galleri Riis, Oslo, 2019
Extracts from a Future History, Public Art Agency Sweden, 2017