Contemporary Art

MOCA, Los Angeles (2007)

Marlene Dumas Measuring Your Own Grave 2003 oil on canvas 55 1/8 x 55 1/8 in. private collection © 2008 Marlene Dumas photo by Andy Keate

The Foundation helped support Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave. This exhibit was the first mid-career survey of the work of Marlene Dumas to be organized by an American institution. “Dumas’s rigorous investigation of the human condition is manifested through portraiture, figuration, and her ongoing, painterly exploration of the body. The exhibition, which included over 100 paintings and drawings, was organized according to specific subjects Dumas has examined throughout her 30-year career, including children, pregnant women, the dead, and the female nude. Rather than a chronological installation, the exhibition was organized thematically, inviting new associations between bodies of work and suggesting different relationships between subjects.”