Rendering Relations/Figuring Paint: The Work of Marlene Dumas in Measuring Your Own Grave

Abstract

Measuring Your Own Grave is the title of a major U.S. midcareer retrospective of the work of Marlene Dumas that was on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in winter 2008/2009. The exhibition presented a vast body of figurative and portrait paintings as well as drawings, notebooks, writing, and collage. Dumas's concentrated work presents the viewer with particularly powerful images that remind one of the corporeal links between public and private life. The work challenges our particular ways of viewing and naming what we see. When looking at the others within her paintings, we are little able to escape looking too at ourselves. This article is an attempt to examine what in Dumas's work makes this so.