-- Artist statement
‘I fucking want to jump to the age of 30 and get married and then get divorced. Translated by WeChat’
Perfect Pearl is a poetic multimedia project about chasing love and the friction between dream and hard reality.
The main subject is about ‘the concept of love’ seen from a female perspective. What we desire or what we think we should desire. The story touches on existential solitude, the makeability of life and fleeting online personalities; how to emancipate and to find our own identity amidst the (lonely) crowd. Despite its cultural definitions and particularities, love is a universal desire that allowed me to identify with these Chinese women in their early twenties. My friendships resulted in a collaboration where I interweave my own poetic observations with the thoughts and feelings of my young Chinese friends. Pursuing your ‘perfect future dream’ feels like a dangerous game. Won't you always be disappointed if you keep chasing the ‘perfect picture’? How each individual shapes his life and expresses her existence is a source of lasting fascination for me.
I started the project Perfect Pearl in 2018 during an Artist in Residence period in China. I came in contact with female students through Xiamen University. We talked about their loneliness, desires and doubts about relationships. Marrying or not marrying. Because many girls I befriended spoke little English, we used WeChat 'translate'. (WeChat is a popular messaging app in China; a combination of Twitter and Facebook called ‘Moments') In the book PERFECT PEARL I have collected personal texts that I found on 'Moments' or that they sent me directly.
‘So he’s gone. Then I realized that when I was a kid. Mom was not around so much. I never learned to emotionally really be close to people, to tell them I need them, for a hug. Translated by WeChat’
About the artist
Visual Artist Tara Fallaux studied Film and Visual Art at The Dutch Film Academy and The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in The Netherlands and as an exchange student in the school of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in the US. Tara has worked many years as a (documentary style) commercial and editorial freelance photographer and made several documentaries for Dutch public television and international Film festivals. Her last short film ‘Love Letters’ premiered at IDFA 2017 and was nominated for best short international documentary.Since 2018, after a 5 months Artist in Residence period at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen, China, Tara has been focussing more on artistic poetic storytelling projects combining photography, film-installation and bookmaking. The book Perfect Pearl is on the shortlist for Prix du Livre at this years Rencontres D’Arles.
'My work is mostly about the human psyche and how we deal with the so-called 'manufacturability' of life. On a narrative and emotional level I am interested in looking at the inner world of peoples lives: love relationships, coming of age, loneliness, desire and hope. I am always interested in people’s vitality and fate, how we shape the world around us, and vice versa.
