Editorial #42

They blush, dissolve, desire

Article

June 2026

Fig 1. Marlene Dumas, Nicole Ex and Sarah Knigge (then expecting her first child) in Dumas' studio, February 2026 | photo: Sanja Marušić

text: Nicole Ex

I remember standing in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2006, in front of Marlene Dumas’ Models (1994). I had known her work for years, but only then did I fully grasp how radically she had opened up the medium of watercolour. Watercolour long belonged to the world of charming landscapes, hydrangeas, and delicate flowers. But in her hands, diluted colour could turn violent. Pastel tones could become seductive. Her watercolours seemed to overturn every rule the medium had once obeyed. When I shared this observation with her, she admitted, in her genuinely modest way, that perhaps she had indeed opened something up – ‘emancipating watercolour’ from its decorative image and using it as a vehicle for power, politics, war, death, sex and birth.

When I met Marlene in person in 2025, the first thing I noticed about her was her eyes: youthful eyes carrying both immense attentiveness and a mischievous sense of humour. One of Marlene’s painted eyes now gazes out from this issue’s cover. She did not want a portrait of herself, nor an interview: no performance of ‘Marlene Dumas’. Instead, the eye appeared almost casually, laid out by her before she sent it to us, asking what we thought. Alongside it, she suggested a quote by Steve McQueen describing the eye as something that turns the inside out, almost like a wound. It felt like the perfect threshold for this issue. Looking back, it feels inevitable that eyes became a recurring thread throughout these pages: watching, witnessing, grieving, desiring – much like the body itself.

The seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza wrote that the body is far more intelligent than we know. Centuries later, neurologist Antonio Damasio returned to that insight, arguing that thought itself is inseparable from feeling, sensation and the emotional intelligence of the body. We do not think separately from the body, but through it. Dumas’ paintings seem to understand this instinctively. Her bodies are never simply depicted; they feel. They blush, dissolve, desire, recoil, mourn.

It has been an honour and joy to collaborate closely with Marlene Dumas. She is involved with exhibitions of her art around the world, yet the moment she sits down with you, she is drawn into the work itself: the shared act of creating something together. This issue grew from that force.

This is the editorial for See All This #42, Summer 2026. Order the edition here.