AUSTRALIA • BORN IN 1976

IN SEARCH OF AN EDEN

In Australia, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 was compounded by an earlier trauma: the devastating bushfires of “Black Summer”. Like many others, Tamara Dean’s life was transformed, disrupted and interrupted. To escape the anxieties induced during this troubled period, this artist, performer and photographer created a series of shots in various gardens, using her body as the “illuminated point” in the landscape. “I immersed my body in the frigid water, buried myself in crevices in the earth, and enveloped my body in blossoming flowers… and their industrious bees,” says Tamara Dean. “At the end of each day my body was marked with bruises, scratches and bites, yet I emerged from the experience re-energised by the intimate physical sensation of being alive.” “The figure you see moving through the landscape in these works is not just me but the woman I would like to be. She who can fly through the air, tumble through the treetops and climb trees.”

Tamara Dean’s signature style uses the body as a symbol. It is a tool used to break down the barriers separating humanity from its responsibility to the planet. Growing up near a nature reserve, she nurtured a strong passion for the Australian bush that continues to motivate her today. By placing humans at the centre of these wild frescoes, she returns them to their primal state – their status as a species surviving on a planet and an integral part of a sensitive ecosystem. “By becoming aware of this, we can start to see ourselves as part of something bigger, and no longer as the centre of the universe.”

JARDIN DES MARAIS

 

Exhibition printed thanks to the support and expertise of CEWE.