Body Prints: Negative and Positive – 2020
Body and Gouache on paper
1 x 1.5 Meters approx.
The two prints are created live during the video performance ‘Masked Identity In Color / Colored Identity In mask’, that the artist performed and recorded alone in his studio.
A virus, that in itself does not discriminate, could not break the barrier of inequality.
The depths of systemic racial discrimination ensured, without anyone having to move a finger that the suffering spreads more in the populations that have been traditionally discriminated against.
The RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color spectrum which gives color to the virtual world on our digital devices, is used here as a reference to all the people in the world, who have been confined into a primary identity that spells ‘color’.
A mask is usually associated with anonymity. Yet, it is unable to hide the existing prejudices and equalize the people even in an assumed anonymity. Here it represents the ironic futility of attempting equality through anonymity, in a world where skin color continues to define identities.
This Performance Video is a testimony to the false fears that are generated by a systemic machinery to continue to fuel identity politics.
Awards and Shows:
Short listed (among 39 works) out of the 684 submitted to the Corona Call.
Corona Call Exhibition in Basel – Projektraum M54. 3 – 19