Foreign Policy

Tacita Dean's Foreign Policy, a chalk‑on‑blackboard piece, is part of a series of cloud representations that began in 2014, when the artist was struck by the sight of a cloudiness resembling a “mushroom cloud” in the Los Angeles sky.

The English artist had originally made Foreign Policy for the office of the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, in the midst of the Brexit campaign. The challenge of capturing the ever-changing shape of clouds echoes the deep political instability of this moment. Tacita Dean, whose work frequently deals with the landscape, most often captures, through her drawings or films, elements which are in transition: trees in bloom, glaciers under threat… the precariousness of the elements evokes that of our existences and of our societies.