JAMBE NOIRE DE L'ANGE (LA)

of FATMI Mounir

FRANCE, 2011, 00:10:02

Genre : Video art

Summary :

"(…)For his video, The Angel’s Black Leg/Jambe Noir de l’Ange, 2011, based on Fra Angelico’s painting La Guérison du diacre Justinien, 1438-1440, Fatmi focuses on the unusual medical act that Saints Côme and Damian are pictured attending to: the grafting of a black man’s leg to the white body of Deacon Justinien. A haunting, high-pitched sound provides the ghostly audio for Fatmi’s work, a montage of x-ray, magnified and negative images of the 15th century painting. “Others don’t see the black leg right away,” Fatmi observes, “or write about it, or consider it.” In his work, the black leg is primary, “the beginning of mixed society,”  in a Renaissance rejection of the bifurcation of race and culture. (…)"

Lillian Davies, Excerpt from Suspect Language, Skira, 2012.

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