Marie Tomanova
Czech-born Marie Tomanova grew up in a South Moravian border town, Mikulov. After receiving a painting MFA she left to United States. Turning to photography displacement, identity, gender, and memory became key themes in her work. Tomanova has had solo shows worldwide including in New York City, Prague, Tokyo, and Paris; her work has been exhibited in Berlin for the European Month of Photography 2020 Biennial, at Paris Photo, and at the Rencontres d’Arles as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2021 (Arles, France). At Rencontres d’Arles it was selected to travel to the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival in Xiamen, China in 2021. Tomanova is currently preparing exhibition for The Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic to coincide with the release of a feature-length HBO documentary on her trajectory as an artist, World Between Us, by director Marie Dvořáková. Tomanova's first book Young American (Paradigm Publishing, 2019) focuses on individuality, identity, and belonging in the American social landscape. It features a foreword by acclaimed photographer Ryan McGinley and sold out shortly after its publication. Deftly entwining portraiture and landscape to recontextualize and expand the meaning of each, Tomanova published, with art historian Thomas Beachdel, her second book New York New York (Hatje Cantz, 2021) with foreword by Kim Gordon. Her third book It Was Once My Universe, with foreword by Lucy Sante, was published by SuperLabo, Japan in fall 2022. It is a deeply personal project about her return home to the Czech Republic after eight years in exile as an immigrant living in the United States.
It was once my universe
John Berger wrote, “To emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.” Like many others, emigrating to the United States has been the most significant decision of Marie Tomanova’s life. The idea of an affirmative space, particularly around the concept of belonging, is paramount in understanding Tomanova’s work. Displacement, place, community, self, and memory are the key themes in her work.
“It Was Once My Universe” (2019) was created during Tomanov'a first return home after 8 years of living in the United States. It was not her choice to stay away from home so long, but she could not return. And for her, it hurt to be away. During this time in the United States, she relived and idealized home in her head when things were difficult, so when she went back to the Czech Republic in the winter of 2018, she was unprepared for the deep confusion and conflict she found in herself. She felt she had become alien from her home, and yet…she still belonged - it is home, …but now so is America. This work is about that. It is about contradictory feelings and disorientation. It is about home, family, memory, distance, and time. The date stamp in the photos is important because it emphasizes a specific time, a moment, an instant. And yet there is something very off-kilter, just as she was in her return home, the camera is set to a New York time zone. Achronological, the images deceive in a subtle yet powerful way, like nostalgia, like memory, like a dream.
Thomas Beachdel, Ph.D.