Moving Images, Stilling Time: The Art of Fiona Tan

Abstract

Most discussions of Fiona Tan's work focus on the artist's migrant and mixed-race identity. Tan has an Indonesian-Chinese father and Anglo-Australian mother; she was born in Pekan Baru, Indonesia, spent her formative years in Melbourne, Australia, and has spent most of her adult life in the Netherlands. She is rarely described as merely a Dutch or European artist but rather designated as a global citizen whose works draw critical connections between these places and their cultures. This article offers a reading of Tan's deployment of temporality as demonstration of her engagement with the changing ethno-politico landscape in the Netherlands. Deploying Rothberg and Yildiz's concept of acts of citizenship, the author reads Tan's The Changeling (2006) and Provenance (2008) as politicized acts of migrant citizenship in Europe. Show more