The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge

2021, Edgar Calel

Woman in Leopard Print

2019, Farah Al Qasimi

This is one of a group of photographs in Tate’s collection by Farah al Qasimi that present interiors and scenes of striking colours, shimmering textures and graphic textiles. They were taken in the United Arab Emirates and the United States, countries between which the artist lives and works, playfully engaging with cultural signifiers, gendered expressions of identity and colonial legacies in the Middle East. Each photograph exists in an edition of five with two artist’s proofs.

In Search of Vanished Blood

2012–20, Nalini Malani

In Search of Vanished Blood 2012 is a room-sized installation consisting of six synchronised projected films, a soundscape and five rotating transparent cylinders made of a type of polycarbonate plastic known as Mylar; these have paintings of animals and mythological figures on their inside surface. As the films are projected through the cylinders, which rotate at four revolutions per minute, shadows form across the animations and are cast around the gallery walls. Produced for documenta 13 in 2012, this is one of a number of works involving film projections and rotating reverse-painted transparent cylinders which the artist calls ‘video/shadow plays’, referring to the narratives and layers that are unveiled through the duration of the films and soundscape. It gives voice to women in Greek and Hindu mythologies, lamenting histories of gendered violence – particularly in times of modern conflict – and clashing ideals of dominating nationalisms.

Matanzas Sound Map

2017, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Neil Leonard

Lungenflügel

2009, Pipilotti Rist

Presented across three screens, Lungenflügel (Lobe of the Lung) 2009 is an immersive video installation, lasting just over fifteen minutes. It depicts a luxurious valley in which the two main characters, a naked woman and a pig, wander. The human and the animal are put on the same plane, each appearing on one of the facing screenings, left and right of the central projection. The woman crawls on all fours, eating apples straight from the grass, in a choreography that very closely emulates the movements of the swine. As the work progresses, the footage becomes more abstract, filmed partly underwater in hues of vibrant red and partly in fields of brightly coloured tulips. Lungenflügel plays on kaleidoscopic colours and distortions, as well as the disproportionate relationship between the scale of the projection and the viewer’s body. The installation, which includes pillows and a carpet, encourages the audience to lie on the floor. This is the only position from which the work can be seen in its entirety. The work offers a non-human centric perspective of the world; its enhanced colours evoke the hues of the internal organs, while the title of the work refers to a portion of the respiratory system.

Babel

2001, Cildo Meireles

Babel 2001 is a large-scale sculptural installation that takes the form of a circular tower made from hundreds of second-hand analogue radios that the artist has stacked in layers. The radios are tuned to a multitude of different stations and are adjusted to the minimum volume at which they are audible. Nevertheless, they compete with each other and create a cacophony of low, continuous sound, resulting in inaccessible information, voices or music.

Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum?

1989, Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group who describe themselves as feminist activist artists. They use facts, humor and visuals to expose gender and racial discrimination in politics, art, film, and popular culture. This poster, highlighting the lack of women artists in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection in New York, was designed as a billboard. It was commissioned by the Public Art Fund in New York but was rejected. The Guerrilla Girls then paid to put it on the side of New York City buses to make sure it would still be seen. Since forming in 1984, Guerilla Girls have been involved in hundreds of projects all over the world. Their identities remain unknown.

Gallery label, July 2020

Untitled, from Eel Series, Venice, Italy

1978, Francesca Woodman

Just below centre of this square black and white photograph is a round white bowl containing the twisted body of an eel. The bowl sits on a speckled terrazzo floor beside the artist, who lies naked on her right side on the floor, her legs are slightly bent so that the line of her body from her knees to her left armpit roughly follows the curve of the bowl. Her left arm is extended and twisted, further framing the bowl, and terminates with her upturned hand. With her face obscured underneath her arm, only Woodman’s hair is visible above her angular shoulders. Her outstretched arm is blurred as though in movement, and, like her legs, is largely in shadow, whereas her nude back and pelvis catch the soft light that falls from outside the frame.

On 22 and 23 August, Wenceslas Square was Cleared of People, August 1968

1968, printed 1970s, Josef Koudelka

This image of an arm held up against Prague’s Wenceslas Square has become Josef Koudelka’s most iconic photograph. The usually bustling square is eerily quiet. For a long time, Koudelka thought he had taken the photograph at 6pm. This would have been proof the Czechoslovakian people had not fallen for a Soviet ruse to attend an evening protest and given the soldiers an excuse to attack. Years later, however, he realised the watch read 12 noon when the square had also been cleared.

Gallery label, March 2025

A Tax Haven Run By Women

2010–1, Monster Chetwynd

Marilyn Diptych

1962, Andy Warhol

This artwork is on display in In the Conservation Studio: Andy Warhol.

Warhol made his first paintings of Marilyn Monroe soon after the actor died of a drug overdose on 5 August 1962. Warhol used a publicity photo for her 1953 film Niagara as the source image. The use of two contrasting canvases for Marilyn Diptych illustrates the contrast between the public life of the star, who at the time was one of the most famous women alive, and her private self. This was not necessarily Warhol’s intention. He created this work when the art collectors Burton and Emily Tremaine visited Warhol’s home. They suggested that two canvases he had already made be presented as a diptych, to which Warhol responded, ‘gee whiz yes’.

The Snail

1953, Henri Matisse

WHAT EFFECTS ARE CREATED BY PLACING DIFFERENT COLOURS NEXT TO EACH OTHER? Henri Matisse loved making art. But when he was in his 60s ill health made it difficult for him to paint. Instead he started ‘painting with scissors’, cutting painted paper into shapes. He had assistants to help him in the studio. They moved the paper pieces following Matisse’s directions, pinning them to the walls of his studio. If you look closely at The Snail you can see small pin holes. Matisse has arranged the paper in the spiral shape of a snail’s shell, placing colours next to each other to create a vibrant effect: green and red, orange and blue, pink and yellow.‘It is not enough to place colours, however beautiful, one beside the other; colours must also react on one another.’

Gallery label, July 2020

Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams I

1961–5, Ibrahim El-Salahi

El-Salahi studied painting in Khartoum, Sudan, in the late 1940s. He then completed his studies in London. When he returned to Sudan in 1957 it was a newly independent country in the middle of a civil war. El-Salahi recognised that this new context required a different artistic approach. He started using simple forms, strong lines and sombre colours. He was inspired by his environment and included Arabic and African forms and iconography. In this work El-Salahi captures the moments when memory and dreams, past and present collide.

Gallery label, June 2020

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

1943, Dorothea Tanning

This scene of a dreary hotel corridor appears haunted by unnatural forces. The oversized sunflower on the landing is strangely animated. A life-size doll leans in a doorway while the long hair of a girl stands on end, blown by the wind. These unexpected elements suggest childhood fantasies and nightmares, and echo elements of the Gothic novels that Tanning loved. The title, ‘A Little Night Music’, is borrowed from one of Mozart’s most light-hearted chamber works and appears to be used ironically.

Gallery label, February 2011

Lobster Telephone

1938, Salvador Dalí

Lobster Telephone is an unexpected combination of objects. Dalí believed bringing them together could reveal secret desires. For him, both lobsters and telephones were connected with sex. This work is a classic example of a surrealist object. The surrealists promoted the idea that art could reflect the mysteries of the unconscious mind.

Gallery label, August 2020

Fountain

1917, replica 1964, Marcel Duchamp

Fountain is Duchamp’s most famous work. It is an example of what he called a ‘ready-made’ sculpture. These were made from ordinary manufactured objects. He then presented them as artworks. This invites us to question what makes an object ‘art’? Is this urinal ‘art’ because it is being presented in a gallery? The original 1917 version of this work has been lost. This is one of a small number of copies that Duchamp allowed to be made in 1964. Do you think it makes a difference that it is not Duchamp’s original urinal?

Gallery label, July 2020

European Mask

1990, Pacita Abad

This is one of a group of three quilted canvas works in Tate’s collection by the Filipino artist Pacita Abad (see also Bacongo III 1986, Tate T15298, and Bacongo IV 1986, Tate T15299). They are part of a series that Abad began in the late 1970s. Referring to them as trapuntos, from the Italian word for embroidery or quilt, these works are the artist’s responses to the cultural traditions that she encountered during her travels in Asia, Africa and Latin America, although they also refer to vernacular traditions of sewing – a traditional part of family education in the Philippines. They were made using large pieces of canvas onto which the artist stitched forms, creating a three-dimensional effect by stuffing the canvases and transforming their surface with paint, shells, buttons, beads, mirrors and other objects collected on her travels. Their decorated surfaces integrate a range of patterning techniques to create semi-figurative forms with what look like large eyes set in stylised, mask-like faces. Abad dispensed with stretcher bars and hung these works directly on the wall or from the ceiling and this, combined with the distinctive technique, transformed the relatively flat surface of a picture into something more multi-dimensional. The portability of the trapunto form can be said to resonate with the peripatetic aspect of a migrant existence as experienced by the artist, being an object that can theoretically be rolled up and more easily transported than a stretched painting.

Life of Imitation

2009, Ming Wong

Life of Imitation 2009 is a multimedia work by the Singaporean artist Ming Wong who works primarily in moving image and installation. It was first presented in the Singapore Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. It comprises two main parts: a double video projection and a suite of four large billboard ‘posters’, each of which is a painting in acrylic on canvas. The aesthetic of these posters evokes an analogue age reliant on hand-drawn illustration and combines images of one of the film’s protagonists alongside key quotes from the film. Though these two parts can be exhibited separately, a presentation of both film and posters creates the conceit of a major film production in an alternative history of cinema.