archival pigment print

Artwork date: 2011
Signature details: signed, dated and numbered 3/6 in pencil in the margin; accompanied by a certificate of authenticity
Edition: from an edition of 6 + 2AP
Exhibited: Galerie Baudoin Lebon, Paris, Archival Impulse & Poverty Pornography, 19 September to 11 November 2013, another example of the edition exhibited.; Gallery MOMO at Paris Photo 2011, Paris, another example of the edition exhibited.; Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg, Projection Surface, 25 August to 19 September 2011, another example of the edition exhibited.

(1)

image size: 145 x 145 cm; framed size: 172 x 171 x 2 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg.

Notes:

Born in the US and based between Johannesburg, New York and Paris, Ayana Jackson’s work examines the complexities of representation. She is, however, not only an artist but an activist and her work is very political.

Destruction forms a part of the Poverty Porn (Povporn), 2011-2013 series, in which Jackson restaged well-known photographs such as Eddie Adams’ iconic Saigon Execution from 1968, shot during the Vietnam War as well as the famous image of the starving child and the hooded vulture in famine-ridden Sudan by photojournalist Kevin Carter.

The term ‘Poverty Porn’, of course, describes the abundance of disturbing images of misery in developing countries. The artist’s aim, in drawing upon this category, is to create a conversation about photography’s treatment of the non-white body, to interrogate the photographic representation of impoverished bodies in the global south and question how this filters into current representations and racial stereotypes.

Jackson chose to use nudes in the images to replicate the emotional tension created by images of ‘poverty pornography’. One is simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by the image of suffering as one is attracted to and shamed by images of nudes. She furthermore uses her own body instead of the bodies of other women, as she believes that subjecting another woman’s body to this form of problematic representation would contradict and indeed undermine the intention of the series.

Destruction is an exceptionally powerful image. Jackson has masterfully imposed two versions of her own body onto a street scene. The large nudes dominate the picture plane. One figure looks directly at the other, her hand – held as a gun – pointing at her neighbour as she begins to fall. It is a skilfully constructed and dramatic scene as the artist demands the audience take pause, consider the tensions within the image and finally stop to interrogate how and why images of suffering seduce.

A solo exhibition of Ayana Jackson’s work is scheduled to take place at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington in 2023.

Sarah Sinisi