Thesentür Re-imagines Marker & Resnais, Statues Also Die

1. 

Thesentür: Conscientious Objector to Formalism is a series of minimal image- and quotation-based works using poetry to confront mainstream art criticism and art history, to look beneath the surface politics of aesthetics and formalism in a presentation of art that is not self-referential or to put a Black face on the art history of imperialism. Formalism functions as the cosmetics of art criticism like aluminum siding on a slumlord’s property. It is an attempt to disguise what is crumbling beneath the surface politics of its proselytizing church bells, ringing, in the mega church/museums and galleries where there are more Black bodies guarding the white cube than exhibiting in it. What marginalized artists know is that canon formation is a battlefield and critical art is the weapon, in the crossed-out words of Basquiat to repel ghosts.

2.

My current work in the Thesentür series is titled “After Statues Also Die,” based on the French essay film directed by Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Ghislain Cloquet. ¹ It is the first triptych in the series, based on translations of the screenplay by Marker. This is the first film I ever watched by Marker. As I was viewing it on Youtube, I knew I wanted to create new works based on it as an extension of the Thesentür series. What gripped me was how the English and French text were translating each other against the animated images, of the looted, functional art from a stolen people, robbed blind by the bloodied-braille of an alien language.