Fiona Tan (b. 1966, Indonesia)
Vertical Red, 2018

Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (SA), Australia / Visited on 14/11/2019

I am doing it all the time, every day. Noticing some unintentional aesthetic aspect in the world and recording it – as a snapshot with my phone, a short video or sound recording. Getting associations to possible symbolic meanings, peculiar patterns, artworld references. Occasionally thinking “this could be art somehow – but how?”

What makes Tan’s video shot through her studio window “art”? Surely, an aesthetic element is there. Relatability. A slightly unusual orientation of the screen. An abstracting title. A soundtrack. A curator’s note making some vague suggestion about reframing of “the complex systems that structure our world”. Belonging to an established oeuvre with recognisable name.

What I am missing myself then is name, oeuvre and curator. The question is whether I really “miss” them… I keep returning to that question a lot.