Marlene Dumas was born in Cape Town and graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975. She studied psychology in Holland for two years (1979--1980). Since then she has had numerous exhibitions and her reputation has steadily grown. She has participated in high profile exhibitions such as Documenta 7 and 9 (in 1982 and 1992), the Bienal Sao Paulo in 1985, and the 1995 Johannesburg and Venice Biennales.Her work is represented in the South African National Gallery by a series of portraits called The Next Generation. In 1999 a major touring exhibition of her work was launched at the Museum of Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp.Notwithstanding the call for a pluralist, inclusive approach to artmaking, the 'possibilities' of painting continue to be marginalized. Installation art and photography have dominated the art establishment in recent years, as though these provide the only viable methods of interrogating the relationship between representation and reality. It seems that painting has yet to shake off its association with contested modernist notions, such as idealism, positivism, universality, essentialism, and the related notions of catharsis and empathy with which modernism naively explained the production and reception of art. It is more than a decade since Thierry de Duve called on painters to address 'the idea of (painting's) rebirth as language' (1986:17) -- a difficult task given the burden of its history, particularly as regards oil painting.



During the Helsinki Festival, Kunsthalle Helsinki will offer a unique opportunity to see works by one of the hottest names in contemporary art, Marlene Dumas. The show presents an exceptionally broad retrospective of the artist's production from the 1970s up to the present. Born in South Africa in 1953, Dumas lives and works in the Netherlands. She is known for her masterful watercolours and subtle portraits. Her work enjoys an established status in major art museums and galleries and fetch unprecedented prices at auctions. Dumas' work is currently on exhibit at the main venue of the Venice Biennial. Exhibitions of her work have been relatively rare in the Nordic countries, and the present show is the largest of its kind here.Marlene Dumas' paintings are a profound exploration of the human condition, of sexuality, birth and death, as well as psychological and philosophical themes. The show in Helsinki will include Female, a series of 211 female portraits that examines the representations of femininity, the gaze and the process of depiction and interpretation.