Marlene Dumas: a podcast with insights into her life and her exhibition at Palazzo Grassi
To mark the occasion of Marlene Dumas’ first ever major solo exhibition in Italy, Palazzo Grassi collaborated with Chora to produce 'A Sort of Tenderness. Marlene Dumas between Words and Images': a podcast that delves into the artist’s personal history and the preparation of 'open-end'.
To mark the occasion of Marlene Dumas’ first ever major solo exhibition in Italy, Palazzo Grassi collaborated with Chora Media to produce 'A Sort of Tenderness. Marlene Dumas between Words and Images': a podcast that delves into the artist’s personal history and the preparation of her exhibition, ‘open-end’, through her words and the accounts of a handful of important guests. Created by author and writer Ivan Carozzi, the project involved numerous figures from the international cultural scene - philosopher Adriana Cavarero, Strega Prize winner Walter Siti, writers Olivia Laing and Marlene van Niekerk, art historians Donatien Grau and Elisabeth Lebovici, curator Caroline Bourgeois and the staff of Palazzo Grassi - who were called upon to contribute to a collective narrative on the themes and artistic universe of Marlene Dumas: prostitution, innocence and guilt, masculinity and the female body, violence and tenderness. This is accompanied by a sideways glance at the icons of the South African artist’s secular devotion, which ventures into unprecedentedly intimate perspectives on famous faces from recent history, from Charles Baudelaire to Oscar Wilde.
This brand-new publishing project aimed to provide an intimate insight into the artist’s world as a standalone experience, in the context of Palazzo Grassi’s accessibility and scientific study activities, offering an inclusive audio product designed to be enjoyed by Italian and international audiences alike.
The podcast is free for all to listen to, with two episodes for each language - Italian, French and English - and is available on streaming platforms Spreaker, Spotify or Apple.
One of Marlene Dumas’ professors in Cape Town once said that he appreciated the former student’s “terrifyingly free way of looking, asking, showing, questioning, mocking, risking and joking”.
From One Hemisphere to the Other: The Life and Stories of Marlene Dumas
The first episode delves into the artist’s biography, from her childhood to when she became one of the most influential artists on the contemporary art scene. Marlene Dumas shares anecdotes about the intense experience of growing up in the second half of the 20th century in the Kuils River area, a semi-rural region 25 kilometres from Cape Town, in apartheid-era South Africa.
When I finished my studies at the University of Cape Town, I applied for several scholarships and managed to secure a two-year scholarship to study art abroad. At that time, everyone involved in the modern art scene thought that New York was the most interesting place to be. I, however, didn’t feel ready to be there - in fact, to be perfectly honest, I was afraid of going to New York, afraid of the New York art world because I still wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do; so I thought I would start by moving to Europe and that, with my affinity for the Dutch language, I would feel more comfortable in Holland.
At the age of twenty-three, she moved to Amsterdam - where she still lives and works to this day - and found herself catapulted into a city that was becoming a place defined by freedom and experimentation, a Mecca for hippies from all over the world. In the 1970s, Amsterdam was considered the ‘Magish Centrum’ - the magical centre of Europe.
By twenty-five, the artist had started exhibiting her work at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, then in 1982, she participated in ‘Documenta’ exhibition in Kassel, Germany. However, in 1984, the name Marlene Dumas was still far from well-known.
She was invited to Australia, to the Sydney Biennale, where she put her work on show alongside the likes of American artist Mike Kelley and Anselm Kiefer, a German contemporary. Whilst her two colleagues are allocated large areas, she is given a much smaller space, something that pushes her - says Dumas herself - to double down on her commitment and compete more tenaciously.
open-end: Marlene Dumas à Venise
The second episode focuses particularly on the journey made by the works selected to be part of Dumas’ exhibition ‘open-end’ in Venice, as told through the stories of those who helped to organise the exhibition at Palazzo Grassi. With the introduction of professional figures who work behind the scenes at Palazzo Grassi, listeners can discover - through their words - the countless fine details that go into preparing an exhibition. Marco Ferraris, head of the exhibitions department at Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana, took the opportunity to explain what his job entails:
“Essentially, we are the working group that tries to translate, as faithfully as possible, the artist’s requirements for producing their work and, if they are paintings, for being able to display them in the best possible way in terms of both lighting and space. In a way, we are the ones who really have to manage to plumb the depths of each artist’s obsession. Every artist is different, and comes with a different obsession, so we have to try to think through that specific lens and find the right people to collaborate with.”
One of the defining aspects of Marlene Dumas’ production is her interest in literary characters - and their faces in particular - with the scowling face portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini from 2012 being a prime example.
“I must admit that Pasolini was a very attractive man. I don’t remember precisely when I became such a fan of his, but I still remember the time I hitchhiked to Paris to see his film Salò. And I saw it in Italian with French subtitles, so I couldn’t understand a word - I just looked at the pictures. What interested me about Pasolini was his links with politics, religion and the sacred; then, in Mamma Roma, there was the mother-son relationship. I always thought it was wonderful to be able to find different kinds of love stories in his films.”