Marlene Dumas

With her work Dumas often makes poignant remarks on ingrained role patterns and social relationships. During her youth in apartheid-divided South Africa, she herself experienced the way in which people tend to regard each other as ‘types’ rather than as individuals. Blindfolded involves a series of portraits of blindfolded Palestinian men. Dumas has produced them in response to the hopeless situation in the Middle East and the endless images of refugees, prisoners and victims shown in the media. For an artist whose work is often so centered around the eyes, around looking and seeing, the blindfold represents considerable degradation. Someone who is deprived of sight is subject to that of others.