The work of Tacita Dean forms part of the history of Serralves’ programming, which began with a solo exhibition in 2002, and continued a year later with the filming of Dean’s work Boots (2003) in the Casa Rosa. 

This new exhibition offers Dean another opportunity to show Boots, which was acquired by the Museum, alongside her new ambitious film project Antigone (2018), which premiered in the Royal Academy of Arts with her trilogy of exhibitions which also took place at the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery in London. Antigone has been many years in the making, and the ideas have manifested in other works over the past three decades, most significantly with Boots. This double-screen, 35mm one-hour film is an epic exploration of the artist’s sister’s name Antigone, which features poet and playwright Anne Carson and actor Stephen Dillane. The film project evokes the eponymous mythological figure and her blind and lame father, Oedipus. 

The exhibition at Serralves Museum has been able to unite a series of early works that manifest the early thinking behind Antigone. Alongside these works, two of her most recent large-scale blackboard drawings and a multi-part photogravure will also be displayed.