I saw dead people (at the Marlene Dumas exhibit)

 I am not sure what brought me to the Marlene Dumas's exhibit at the Menil Museum.  I had promised myself I wouldn't go.  Titled "Measuring your grave", the exhibit promised grey-green portraits of dead people.   I had thrown away the announcement: bad mojo.

Thank God a friend's rave review changed my opinion.  Yes, there are two rooms of dead people in the exhibit, and lots of gaping holes (not all of them from bullets), but the portraits are stunning.

I loved the two full walls portraits: 112 faces of black people in one room and what looked like 60 faces of prostitutes in the other.   And I loved the large size babies in the next-to-last room.

But I ran away from the hanging child, even if she was "Imaginary 4, 2003", I didn't want to know anything about her.

"Measuring your own grave" looked like a practical idea to me.  The woman in the painting seems to be doing just that, the way she hangs from what looks like the edge of the earth, giving us a full view of her black tights and shoes.  She seemed to say: "Four feet, yes, this will do" and seems resigned to her end.

She reminds me of a picture of the holocaust I saw in a French history magazine.  A group of Jewish women, stripped naked is  standing by the side of what is to be their grave, old women who are past nakedness and young mothers holding babies and small children.  The soldiers are about to shoot. Some women are looking away, others are staring at the hole below them, measuring the size of their grave.

I never forgot that picture.  I don't think I'll ever forget the Dumas picture either.  Sometimes the rawness of a picture isn't about voyeurism but quite the opposite: the need to carry the remembrance beyond the span of our own lives.

Comments

[Maylis]

Hi Marie-Pierre, I am so glad you wrote about this exhibition, because I saw it recently and wasn't sure what to think about it/what words to use to describe it. You've done so beautifully, and your post has definitely helped me order my thoughts.