Tamar Bresge

Artist Biography

Tamar Bresge is an artist and writer working at the intersection of text, literature, language, and image. Her own understanding of the material world, and conceptualizing of its phenomena, is largely influenced by her being partially sighted and hearing. She uses a careful practice of self-knowledge in psyche, body, sight, and sound to question notions of language, culture, identity, image, text, music, and voice. She is a recent TED Talk speaker and will be teaching at Tufts University in the fall of 2022.

Artist Statement

My work as an artist and writer happens at the intersection of text, literature, language, and image, between visual art and writing. I am curious about the language of sight and knowledge—of looking, seeing, and reading. These questions are imperative to me as a person with an alternative experience of vision. I think of looking as a straightforward act: physical, corporeal, easy. When the eye is open, it is looking. I think of the act of seeing as much more complicated; it is cultural and personal, a psychological act located between body and mind. And I am obsessed by our language of the eye of the body, and the I of the self. Through this lens, I play with the intricate weaving that joins language, knowledge, and sight.

My first practice is as a reader. I use this as a space for excavation. I am looking for myself inside of writing—my own, and that of others. As a redactive reader, I extract noise from the page, leaving behind the leftovers; the space of silence and those essential words which must intuitively be left behind. 

I invite my viewer to challenge their own private practices of looking, seeing, and reading by engaging with text-based artwork. In my play with subtle visual redactions, punctuation, enjambments, and image-based poetry, I strip personal and cultural texts to the bare bones of the thing. Asking my viewer—my reader—to be curious about the shape of the page, its negative space, and the musical sounds of silence.

Instagram: @tamar_parpar
Email: tamarbresgeart@gmail.com
Website: https://www.tamarbresge.com/