The work of Tamara Dees (b. 1971 in Terneuzen) is about experiencing and investigating what it is like to be small in a big world – often the world of shipping. In recent years she has repeatedly investigated the actual size of ships, as well as the actual size of various ‘big’ works of art. Although ships are a recurrent feature of her work, she is more interested in what happens alongside the nautical world. How big are ships, actually, and what happens if you use them for a quite unintended purpose? Turned upside down, or broken, they become something very different.

In 2008 the artist built a partial replica of the side of a barge for a project at the Caesuur exhibition space in Middelburg, to show the relative sizes of ships and houses. The work, entitled Ware Grootte (‘Full size’), was a huge black surface placed behind the windows of the building – visible and yet invisible.

Dees also investigated the actual size of the wave depicted in Hokusai’s famous print The Great Wave. She estimated the size of the boats and the wave by taking the human figures in the print as her yardstick. She then used these sizes to produce an installation at the Kipvis guest studio in Vlissingen.

A small newspaper report about a tragedy in 2011 was the inspiration for several works in which all the passengers in an older newspaper photograph of ‘boat people’ were coloured with a marker pen, to emphasise the disappearance of the subject matter. The Disappearance (2013) is based on a book of pictures about the history of sailing. All the ships shown in the book, as well as the people on board them, are coloured with permanent black marker ink. Where is the boundary between presence and disappearance?

Tamara Dees studied sculpture at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design and Visual Arts at the Post Sint Joost Academy in Breda. Her work has been purchased by the Sanders-Ten Holte collection, the Woongoed housing corporation in Middelburg, the Vlissingen art library and various private collections. It has also been commissioned for temporary exhibitions in public space by clients including the Province of Limburg/Roermond Municipal Museum and the Province of Zeeland Visual Arts Centre (CBK Zeeland).