The South African artist Marlene Dumas has been cultivating her very unique position within figurative painting since the early eighties, focussing on the topic of the "human image". The artist does not use models but takes her images from the media and popular culture, resorting to her own photographs or pictures from newspapers or television. "What interested me was to make a statement about people´s frame of mind and the relationships between them." According to Dumas, "this would be naturalism, only illustrative." Nevertheless, her pictures impress by their urgent realism. And yet, Dumas does not intend to provoke but raises questions about (gender) identity, oppression, sexual and ethnic violence, the position of women and minorities, always seeking to initiate new thought processes. This book, featuring the series of drawings Models and Rejects, gives an overview over her work in the last ten years. Exhibition Schedule: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston April - July, 2001 The artist: Marlene Dumas, born 1953 in Capetown. From 1972-1975, she studied painting at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at Capetown. In 1975, move to the Netherlands. Studies at the Ateliers `63 at Haarlem and the Psychological Institute at the University of Amsterdam. Numerous exhibitions, among them participation in the documenta 7 and IX at Kassel.