Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean started to draw into alabaster during a stay in Italy in 2002. She was intrigued with the particular qualities of this stone. Its translucent surface is extremely soft and fragile, so it can easily be scratched and scored to leave white lines on the surface. In Kronos, which refers to the personification of time in Greek mythology, Dean “maps” the particular characteristics of the stone by tracing the veins, stains, and imperfections with the delicate etching and adding notations of her own signs and directions along the route. Through this process of weaving her own personal journey together with the physical nature of the material, the artist contemplates the subject of time itself and makes her subtle interventions part of a larger geological, geographical, and social history.