On World AIDS Day

"If I have to change my lifestyle, I don't want to live." - Robert Mapplethorpe

In this powerful self-portrait Robert Mapplethorpe looks us straight in the eye. The glowing black background and the focused use of light make his head and his hand look almost detached from his torso, as if floating in mid-air. The skull sceptre he is so forcefully holding in the foreground symbolises the awareness that death was coming for him.

Mapplethorpe would die of an AIDS-related illness a year later at the age of 42. In this photo, he looks like an old man, with hollowed cheeks, sunken eyes and strands of white hair on his temples. This is a brutally honest, haunting picture that has all the formal purity of Mapplethorpe's iconic style in which the artist faces his destiny head on and bids farewell to life.

According to UNAIDS, today there are 37.7 million people living with HIV, of which only 28.2 million have access to life-saving retroviral therapy. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 67% of people living with HIV and 39% of new infections, 63% of which are young women. World leaders must work with the local communities to address these inequalities so the gaps in prevention, testing, treatment and support can be closed.

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Robert Mapplethorpe

Self Portrait, 1988

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Safe and legal routes for refugees NOW

'My piece is not talking about old slave ships; it's about what happens today' says Romuald Hazoumé about his multimedia installation 'La Bouche du Roi' (The King's Mouth), now on show at the Rijksmuseum’s Slavery exhibition. Finally, the museum world starts tackling its colonial past and attempts to tell the true story of how the Golden Age of European imperialism came about and flourished.

The Beninese artist shaped over 300 petrol cans into tribal masks and piled them up to reproduce the image of the Brookes slave ship built in 1789 for English anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson. This powerful work evokes all the suffering and the fear of the African slaves on their forced voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. But in carrying the past into the present, this installation is also tragically redolent of the ongoing refugee crisis, which, make no mistake, is an extension of colonialism and its legacies, where millions of people are equally being dehumanised and displaced.

Earlier today, at least 31 human beings, reportedly including 5 children, lost their life drowning in the English Channel after their dinghy capsized. The figure is not confirmed, there could be more bodies that still need to be retrieved. I personally find it impossible to imagine the desperation and terror they must have experienced in those last moments, knowing it was the end. It's heartbreaking.

The British Home Secretary, whose name I won't allow to soil my page, promptly jumped at the opportunity to point her little xenophobic finger at the 'ruthless criminal gangs' profiteering from human trafficking. The reality is that these tragedies are the consequence of the Government's inhumane policies, and that they could be avoided by opening safe and legal routes for asylum seekers. Those in power are complicit.

#romualhazoume #installation #slavery #colonialism #imperialism #refugees #refugeecrisis #refugeeswelcome #saferoutesnow #blog #blogger #beyondthecanvasblog

Romuald Hazoumè

La Bouche du Roi, 1997

Photograph: Albertine Dijkema

Domenico Gnoli at Fondazione Prada, Milan

“I always use simple elements, I don’t want to add or subtract anything. I never even wanted to deform either: I isolate and I represent. Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970)

This superbly displayed show tells the story of the enigma that is hidden in the everyday object. Gnoli’s hugely rewarding canvasses celebrate the mystery of the ordinary, the unsuspected magic of the familiar. The artist, who died at a painfully young 36 years of age, explored reality by zooming in on the detail of these objects - shoes, garments, furniture - they all come to life in a universe of their own.

Deceptively simple in their visual complexity, these paintings have a dreamlike quality that is both reassuring and disquieting. They emanate a controlled tension, leaving the viewer to ask questions as to who inhabits them, for the human presence is all but invisible. Who‘s the man wearing the herringbone suit? Who was sat on that chair? Whose strand of hair is that?

Gnoli’s textures are exquisitely, almost obsessively, rendered. His sophisticated pictorial prowess is perhaps the main protagonist of this extraordinary show where the intimacy of the everyday is elevated by his unique figurative language.

#domenicognoli #fondazioneprada #milan #italianart #painting #figurativepainting #art #artblog #beyondthecanvasblog

Domenico Gnoli, by SIAE 2021

Photos by the author