L'identité invisible. Voyage, rencontre et narration dans l'art de Fiona Tan

Abstract

This article analyses some Fiona Tan's video - shown at the Biennale Internazionale d'Arte of Venice in 2009 - in which the artist explores the theme of identity. Fiona Tan debates the impact of historical and political events on her own diasporic biography. The artists analyses the role of Marco Polo and the relation between the modernist Western World and the colonialist alterity as described in the ethnographic documentary films in the archive of Amsterdam Filmmuseum. In this way Fiona Tan translates the depletion of the formalism in an audio-visual project deconstructing the Western discourse and the "primitivist phantasy" of the modern era.