Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean is a British Conceptual artist known for her esoteric films and photgraphy. In film she explores both specific historical events and formal qualities of the medium, as seen in her Disappearance at Sea (1996) and The Green Ray (2001). 

Dean's use of celluloid film, photography, installation, and drawing, seems an act of mourning for the analog world of documents and photographs as it passes into the realm of a massive digital archive. 

"A world that won't forget is a world drowned in its not forgetting," she reflected. "Do we want a world full of unedited memory? To be human is to be finite." 

Influenced by a range of artists and writers, including Marcel Broodthaers, Robert Smithson, J.G. Ballard, and W.G. Sebald, Dean's work is steeped in questions regarding cultural loss. In 2001, the artist published her book Floh which consisted of arranged photographs Dean found while scouring flea markets throughout Europe and America. She has gone on to participate in three Venice Biennales as well as documenta 13 in Kassel.