Marlene Dumas is one of the most prominent and influential painters working today. In an era dominated by the mass media and a proliferation of images, her work is a testament to the meaning and potency of painting. Dumas draws on her expansive visual archive and the nuances of language to create intense, psychologically charged works which explore themes such as sexuality, love, death and guilt, often referencing art history and current affairs. Her paintings and drawings are characterized by their extraordinary expressiveness and sometimes controversial subject matter. This fully illustrated exhibition catalogue accompanies a major exhibition at the Tate Modern, the Stedelijk Museum and the Fondation Beyeler. Surveying the artist's oeuvre from the mid-70s to the present, it features over 100 of her most important paintings and drawings alongside lesser-known works from the early period of her career. "The Image as Burden" also includes a new interview with the artist; extracts from previously published but lesser-known texts (some available in English for the first time); and a new short story from prize-winning author Colm Toibin written in response to the paintings. Essays and texts from a wide range of contributors examine the key themes and motifs in her work and reflect on Dumas' entire career.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1953, Marlene Dumas has lived in Amsterdam since 1976. Over the last three decades she has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S., including shows at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Born in Cotonou, Benin in 1961, Meschac Gaba moved to the Netherlands in 1996 to take up a residency at the Rijksakademie. It was there that he conceived The Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997-2002, an ambitious work, which took him five years to complete and which cemented his reputation as one of the most important African artists working today. Consisting of twelve sections - Draft Room, Architecture, Museum Shop, Summer Collection, Games Room, Art and Religion, Museum Restaurant, Music Room, Marriage Room, Library, Salon and Humanist Space - this work challenges preconceived notions of what African art is and provides a new discursive space for social and cultural interaction, critiquing the museum's value both as an institution, and as a symbol of cultural capital. The importance of this work, in the history of African art and in the lineage of critical reflections on the museum by artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Marcel Broodthaers, has been widely acknowledged in important exhibitions ranging from Documenta XI, Kassel in 2002 to Intense Proximity: La Triennale, Paris in 2012. Tate has now acquired this work. This book will be published on the occasion of the first presentation of Gaba's Museum of Contemporary African Art in its entirety in the UK. Contributions by leading scholars will place this important work in the context of the artist's oeuvre, art history and museology.

Light has been an enduring subject in art. In every conceivable media, artists have exploited the contrasts between light and dark, opposed cool and warm colours, drawn on science, and attempted to capture the transient effects of light and its emotional associations. This book explores how artists have perceived, illustrated and utilised light since the eighteenth century. Beginning with the British artist J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) who captured triumphant explosions of light and sought to represent its ephemerality in paint, it reveals how his expressive use of colour and interest in evanescent light influenced the French Impressionists. For them, light became the subject itself, as the likes of Claude Monet (1840–1926), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Alfred Sisley (1839–99) and others ventured outside to capture the momentary effects of sunlight on canvas. Exploring later innovations in photographic processes, the book also highlights how photography became a critical vehicle through which artists began to use light itself as a medium, eschewing subject matter to create photographs that more closely resembled moving abstractions than still images. While early art-historical associations with light tend to be sublime or spiritual, by the 1960s artists including Dan Flavin (1933–96), James Turrell (1943) and Lis Rhodes (1942–) had begun to work with artificial light to create new types of sculptures and immersive installations, repositioning the spectator as participant. Many artists like Olafur Eliasson (1967–) and Tacita Dean (1965–) continue to work with light, encouraging viewers to question their own positions and perspectives. Showcasing over 100 remarkable artworks from the past 200 years, this beautiful book reveals how the intangibility of light continues to fascinate.

Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901-1991) was one of the most influential Turkish artists, best known for her large-scale abstract paintings. Marrying influences from Islamic, Byzantine and Eastern art with the bold colour of the Fauvists, the geometrical dissonance of the Cubists and the precise lines of Mondrian, Zeid developed an abstract vocabulary that was a synthesis of East and West and was uniquely her own. Born in Istanbul in 1901 into a family of highly creative intellectuals, Zeid's artistic career began in the 1920s in Paris and took her to Istanbul, Berlin and Budapest, before she returned to Paris again in 1946. There she joined the Nouvelle Ecole de Paris, a melting pot movement of international artists that championed a new abstract aesthetic. In the mid-1970s Zeid moved permanently to Amman, Jordan, where she established the Royal Fahrelnissa Zeid Institute. She worked and taught there for the rest of her life; her work was exhibited widely and internationally throughout her career. This new book traces her development from the first works she made in Turkey, through her engagement with the D-Group, her later experiments with abstraction and, finally, her return to figuration. It also examines the pivotal role she played in the cross-pollination of artistic ideas in the twentieth century through her involvement with key groups and movements in diverse regions and communities. Documentary photography from the period gives new insight into the historical and art historical events that formed the backdrop to her ever evolving style. Featuring over 100 reproductions of Zeid's bold and colourful paintings, from her earlier geometric, calligraphic style to the later, more expressive portraits, the catalogue showcases the depth and range of her work. Zeid's works have recently been the subject of renewed attention, with prominent displays at the Sharjah Biennial and the fourteenth Istanbul Biennale in 2015. Accompanying an exhibition at Tate Modern, Fahrelnissa Zeid will be the only book available on the life and work of this pioneering artist and will bring her unique sensibility to the wider audience she deserves.

Memory responds to the acquisitions Deutsche Bank has made over the past decade, many of which are by artists from Africa and/or are of African descent. By focusing on personal narratives, alternative perspectives and lesser-known stories, the exhibition seeks to identify the unstable, exploit the slippages, and make clear that the struggle against balance of power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Artists: Yto Barrada, Sammy Baloji, Mohamed Camara, Samuel Fosso, Anawana Haloba, Lubaina Himid, Lebohang Kganye, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Zohra Opoku, Paulo Nazareth, Jo Ractliffe, Berni Searle, Mikhael Subotzky, Dineo Sehee Bopape, Kara Walker, Alberta Whittle, Joy Cheong Wong. Text in English and German.