Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean is a British conceptual artist who is known for her enigmatic films. She explores both specific historical events and the formal qualities of 16mm film, as seen in works such as Disappearance at Sea (1996) and The Green Ray (2001). Dean's use of celluloid film, photography, installation, and drawing is a poignant reminder of the passing of the analog world of documents and photographs into the realm of a vast digital archive. "A world that won't forget is a world drowned in its not forgetting," she once said. "Do we want a world full of unedited memory? To be human is to be finite."

Born in 1965 in Canterbury, United Kingdom, Dean studied at Falmouth University and received her MA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1992. 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, she published her book Floh, which consisted of arranged photographs she found while scouring flea markets throughout Europe and America. She has participated in three Venice Biennales and documenta 13 in Kassel. Dean currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.