Tavares Strachan at the Perrotin gallery, photo: Axel G.
It's beautiful, impressive and above all it looks a lot like Michelangelo's pietà, the one placed at the entrance to Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Normal, it's a replica! But with one detail. Here, the sorrowful Virgin Mary holds on her knees the body of Christ taken down from the Cross before his burial is replaced by Louise Little and her son Malcolm X.
Never has the intrepid African-American human rights defender, assassinated in 1965 in New York, at a time when racial segregation was still a reality in the United States, been represented in such a poignant way.
We are overwhelmed by this work full of grace by Tavares Strachan, a new star from Perrotin who exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2019. The artist restores a deep humanity to Malcolm someone's child. Here he is, on the last day of his life in the arm of his mother, also a figure in the fight for civil rights.
Tavares STRACHAN, Black Madonna (Alice Nokuzola “Mamcethe” Biko and Bantu Stephen Biko), 2022, Carrara marble, 271 x 95.5 x 79 cm | 106 11/16 x 37 5/8 x 31 1/8 inch, Photo: Claire Dorn, Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin
In two other rooms in the Perrotin gallery (entrance through the gallery annex, located on Impasse Saint-Claude), the Bahamian-born artist exhibits the two other monumental sculptures from this black trilogy.
They too are sculpted in Carrara marble, a stone identical to that used by Michelangelo. A second dolorist work depicts Alice Biko holding the bodies of her son Steve Biko, the South African student and anti-apartheid activist who died suspiciously in detention in 1977.
The third work features Kadiatou Diallo and her son Amadou Diallo. The latter was shot dead in New York in 1999, outside his building by four police officers who suspected him of being a rapist. When the young Guinean reached into his pocket to take out his identity papers, the four police officers fired 41 bullets at this innocent man. The tragic episode is also the origin of 41 Shots, a song by Bruce Springsteen.
Tavares STRACHAN, Black Madonna (Louise Little and Malcolm X), 2022, Carrara marble, 197.5 x 193 x 111 cm | 77 3/4 x 76 x 43 11/16 inch, Photo: Axel G
Go see these moving sculptures and discover the ambitious and protean work of an artist who resurrects characters invisible by history, but also places, objects, works of art and even dates linked to the black world . And this, by means of an encyclopedia with 1500 entries which is presented in the form of a bible, religiously displayed under glass like a sacred relic.
But his work for the recognition of the black world goes even further. Far far away. To pay tribute to Robert H. Lawrence, NASA's first African-American astronaut (who never had the chance to go on a mission into space due to a plane accident, at age 32, in 1967) , Tavares Strachan created a gold sculpture in his likeness.
It is not exhibited at Perrotin. And for a simple reason: the artist sent it into space. It has been in orbit since 2018 and for three more years.
Until December 17, 2022
▼ tavares strachan
▼ Gallery Perrotin
76 rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris
From Tuesday to Saturday
10AM - 18PM
Closed Monday and Sunday
Tel: +01 42 16 79 79
Also on view at Marian Goodman are the artist's conceptual multimedia installations until Saturday, November 26
▼ Marian Goodman Gallery
79 Rue du Temple, 75003 Paris, France
From Tuesday to Saturday
11AM - 19PM
Tel: +01 48 04 70 52
Text: Axel G.
18.11.22
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