Artist, Marlene Dumas: Dead Marilyn was a painting I specifically painted for my American show. When I was young, it was the American artist that made the big paintings and I have always wanted to make a big painting and I thought to make a big painting for America, but then in the end I ended up making a very small painting.
It also relates to my own history because my mother died in 2007. And I did not know how to give form to that experience.
I believe a little bit in voodoo also, you know? And that things sort of come to you when you're sort of ready for them, if you give them the opportunity to come.
And then this old newspaper image fell out of all my boxes of things while I was looking for something else. And it was this autopsy photograph of the dead Marilyn Monroe. And because you know, with the war in Iraq and all the kinds of things that were going on in America, this Dead Marilyn seemed to also express a certain end of a certain era.
And one of the criteria for me often to do a work, is when it scares me a bit and when there’s a certain tension between the actual image that I decide to use and what I think I should do or couldn’t do.
In a sense, it is a portrait of death. But it is also a portrait of Marilyn Monroe. It is a portrait of a period. It is a portrait of one’s own potential death.