This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Fiona Tan: Terminology' at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography from July to September 2014, and at the National Museum of Art, Osaka from December 2014 to March 2015. The exhibition is a full-scale retrospective of Tan's works. It traces the thematic changes that have occurred over the years in her practice.

'On this occasion, in staging an overview of the artist's career to date at two art museums in Tokyo and Osaka very different both spatially and in terms of their missions, we wondered if it would be possible, mixing old and new works, to give visitors the opportunity to unravel and savor, form various entry and exit points, the multilayered nature of the themes addressed by Fiona Tan. In conjunction with this, and in close collaboration with the artist, the idea arose of publishing this glossary of terms relevant to Tan's practice.

Simply reproducing works on video—a temporal art to start with—on the two-dimensional page would not allow this book to properly achieve the true purpose of a catalogue. Rather than producing a photo collection bundling together still images, in its very structure Fiona Tan: Terminology attempts to embody Tan's system of thoughts.' - excerpts from essay by Keiko Okamura

A glossary of terms with text is employed as an entry point to provide an overview of Tan's works. Texts are prepared by Midori Matsui, Yoko Hayashi, Asako Fujioka, Miyuki Endo, Keiko Okamura, and Yasuyuki Nakai. A list of selected works from 1991 to 2014 is included. With artist biography.