Taryn Simon Exhibition at the Tate Modern

The Tate Modern

I read a review of this exhibition at the Tate Modern by the award winning American artist Taryn Simon and thought it sounded interesting. Entitled 'A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters', the exhibition is indeed divided into 18 'chapters'. Each of these focuses on a particular bloodline and tells their story using pictures of individuals and related information.

The subjects covered include wild rabbits in Australia (and the attempts to control them), albinos in Tanzania (who are often killed and maimed as their skin is believed to have healing properties) and victims of genocide in Bosnia. The living man declared dead of the title is an Indian man who has been officially recorded as dead so others can take ownership of his land even though he is still living. His chapter tells the story of his attempts to regain his land.

Each chapter includes a series of portraits of related individuals (so, yes there really are dozens of very similar looking pictures of wild rabbits!), an explanation of the story behind the pictures, and a number of 'footnote images' which provide additional photographic evidence of the story being told. The footnotes were often the most interesting part of each chapter and the portraits would mean very little without the explanations so I did struggle somewhat with the idea of this as an exhibition of art.

The chapters tell important, and often disturbing stories and I learnt alot about harrowing circumstances around the world that I wasn't previously aware of but it was the writing rather than the pictures that moved me. Perhaps that means something like this should be in a book or a magazine rather than on the walls of a gallery. On the other hand, the exhibition was busy on a week-day afternoon and, like me, many of the other visitors, may never have heard those stories if they weren't given exposure at the Tate Modern so perhaps that justifies their inclusion. There have been various debates elsewhere as to whether or not this is art. Even having seen the exhibition I'm still undecided.