In Tamara Muller’s work, she uses her own face to tell a story that is not just about her. They are not self-portraits in the fundamental sense of the word. She plays a role, but it is complex. It shoots back and forth between combinations of man, woman, adult, child, human, animal, perpetrator and victim. By leaving parts of the canvas unfinished with simple brush strokes, the focus is mainly on the characters who almost always look at the viewer . The work is not finished until someone looks at it and becomes aware of his own thoughts. Muller doesn’t want to tell a straight story. No unambiguity, but an interaction between apparent contradictions; the personal and the universal, reality and fiction, realism and abstraction. Ambivalent in both form and content, the image and canvas have been manipulated to make the viewer co-actor in this painted ‘paste and cut’ theatre about power, guilt and shame.
‘Because part of me is already in it, I can take a distance from that story.’ Choosing from a stock of previously made selfies with different facial expressions, she pastes her own head on clippings from magazines. Then, using these collages as a basis, Tamara immediately sets up several paintings at once: ‘By working in a series, it isn’t necessary to put everything in a single painting.’ The paintings each stand on their own, but together they also tell a story in which the borderline between good and bad becomes blurred. ‘It’s a game between the viewer and the artist, in which the character’s role keeps alternating between woman, child, animal, victim and perpetrator. It’s not all that black-and-white.’
• Recent exhibitions at Galerie Bart: Bear With me 2023 • Connection 2022 • KunstRAI 2020, Distraction 2018, PAN 2018.
CV
Artist Tamara Muller, born in 1975 in Wehe – den Hoorn, currently lives and works in Breda. Tamara completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 1997. After having exhibited for a number of years, in 2007 Tamara extended her education by obtaining a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at AKV|St. Joost in ‘s Hertogenbosch.
Following the major retrospective exhibition PLAY at the Drents Museum in 2021 in which work, mainly paintings and work on paper, was on show from 2007 to 2021, Tamara spent three years looking for depth and directness in her self-portraits, and experimented with different media. She worked in both the guest studios at the Vincent van GoghHuis in Zundert, and at Studio Drents Museum. There, she related her work to that of Frida Kahlo (at the time of the major exhibition Viva la Frida at the DM) and Vincent van Gogh. Self-portraits, trauma, madness and nature were main themes. The resulted in the solo exhibition FACE ME, PLAY ME, BE ME at Stedelijk Museum Breda 2024 in collaboration with the Vincent van Gogh Huis in Zundert. (see the article ‘Het Elviskind als artistiek gegeven”)
• view complete cv Tamara Muller as pdf.
Artworks
Press
2023 •
26.11 Dagblad van het Noorden. Het Elviskind als artistiek gegeven by Eric Bos.
2022 •
29.08 Dagblad van het Noorden Een fascinerend onderzoek by Eric Bos.
2021 •
04.06 Dagblad van het Noorden Speels ongemak by Joep van Ruiten.
2020 •
06.11 Het Parool Expo: Tamara Muller The Waiting by Edo Dijksterhuis.
2019 •
September Dagblad van het Noorden Tamara Muller ‘Back to the Roots’ by Illand Pietersma.
10.09 VBCN Persona: schilderijen en werk op papier van Tamara Muller, editorial.
15.05 Breda Nu K.I.K.: Tamara Muller, tv interview by Kees van Meel.
2018 •
18.12 MIRADOR de les arts DelicARTessen or the Diversity of Non-Institutional Art, review by Juan Bufill.
Pandora magazine #4 Over schuld, schaamte en macht – Interview met Tamara Muller by Lizan van Dijk and Ruud Vermeer.
2017 •
07.04 John Dalton Tamara Muller Looking below the surface, podcast interview of 81 minutes – EP85.
24.04 Kunstenaar Magazine nr.31 Interview Tamara Muller by Hein Dik.
2015 •
20.08 Elegance Schilderes Tamara Muller, editorial.
01.07 Kunstkrant Double Faced, Tamara Muller doorbreekt vierde wand by Justine le Clercq.
10.07 De Limburger Het dubbele ‘dubbele gezicht’ by Ron Buitenhuis.
June: ECI Cultuurfabriek Bijsluiter 1/Bijsluiter 2 by Renate Dorrestein.
