Tracey Moffat: Between Dreams and Reality

"Making art is quite therapeutic", Tracey Moffatt once said of herself. This brief statement reveals much of the artist's personality and above all about her manner of interpreting the artistic experience, a practice that frequently refers to her personal episodes and events. An Aborigine by birth, Tracey Moffatt grew up as a foster child in a white family in line with the policy of the time, and she quickly became fascinated by the pop culture of those years. Images drawn from magazines, cinema and television began to form the symbolic universe that would become a point of reference in most of her work, alongside the ever-present and in part autobiographical theme of ostracism and segregation experienced in all its aspects: racial, social, sexual. Childhood memories return, blending with mass culture, and there is no longer any difference. Everything mixes in a non-linear narrative built on several narrative and emotive levels. Elements of a story are gathered, but not the thread that binds them together. The photographic narratives of Moffat draw their essence in part from the empty spaces dividing one image from the next. This complete monograph brings together nearly 150 photographs, including a series of film-stills produced by Moffat from 1989 to the present.Filippo Maggia is the author of 'Tracey Moffat: Between Dreams and Reality', published 2007 under ISBN 9788876249327 and ISBN 887624932X.