2004 Infinity Award: Art

Born in Indonesia in 1966 to an Australian mother and a Chinese father, Fiona Tan grew up in Australia. Her cross-cultural biography is replete with questions of immigration, dislocation, ethnic identity, language negotiation, and sorely tested family ties. In Tan’s first feature documentary, May You Live in Interesting Times (1997), she explored her own hybrid identity and the experience of her father’s family as part of the Chinese minority in Indonesia, tracing events back to the remote Chinese village that her relatives left many years ago. 

Tan's video and film installations investigate the power of the camera and of the eye. She records people intently, in their surroundings, in a way that heightens our reading of their actions and emotions. This often encourages a tension between the observer and the observed, with the viewer questioning their own position in the chain. Precise editing and spatial presentation reveal the works' detailed focus. Some of these installations feature new material and others significantly recast archival anthropological material to seriously question and undermine how we, meaning primarily Western viewers, approach these subjects, from Balinese children in the 1930s to Tuareg children from the Sahara. Using both historical and contemporary material, Tan creates visually riveting works that directly mediate the often-conflicted exchange between individuals and between cultures.