Modern Tango World N° 8 (Moscow, Russia) | Page 24

Sunset Tango Collages
Denise Mumm
Denise Mumm creates her tango collages in a studio in her house in Staten Island, New York,
where she has lived since 1982. She is a native of Sioux City, Iowa. She grew up with a watercolorist
mother and a father who made ceramics. Denise earned both her BFA in painting and MA in metal-
working and jewelry from the University of Iowa.
Denise Mumm’s tango imagery began,
naturally enough, soon after a tango pil-
grimage to Buenos Aires. As a srudent of
tango, she travelled there un 2005. Frus-
trated by her shopping for paintings of
tango dancers to take home, Mumm had
a eureka moment. She realized that as
an artist, she could make her own tango
artwork and it would more satisfactorily
express her experience of the dance.
As with the tango itself, creating these im-
ages has become a near obsession. Her
collages focus on details of the dance
that only a dancer knows, such as the
embrace. the precision of the placement
of the feet, and the variety in handholds.
Just as every tanda is different, there are
endless variations. Each of Mumm’s piec-
es, from the smallestm measuring only
four inchesm to the large collages on un-
stretched canvas that are six feet across..
Mumm’s technique for creating these col-
lages was honed as a studio assistant in
the 1980’s, working for the well-known
feminist artist Miriam Shapiro . Shapiro
and Faith Ringgold, for whom Mumm also
worked became her mentors and role
models. Both these artists also combine
figures with bits of pattern, in vivid colors.
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