Dimensions: 350 x 280 mm
Copyright: © Marcel Dzama, courtesy of David Zwirner, New York | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: This untitled work is by Marcel Dzama. Executed in ink and watercolor, it's part of the Tate collection. I’m struck by the stark contrast between the figures. Editor: Yes, there's a strange calmness to it, even with the unsettling imagery of exposed organs and that peculiar animal-headed figure. What do you make of the material choices? Curator: The use of watercolor gives it a delicate, almost fragile quality which belies the macabre subject matter. It seems deliberately at odds with the potential for heavier, more emotionally charged media. Editor: Perhaps the animal figure, dressed in a clerical robe, represents a corruption of spiritual authority or a distorted moral compass within this bizarre tableau? Curator: Or maybe it's a critique of how systems of power strip individuals bare, rendering them vulnerable, exposed like these nude figures. Interesting how the simplicity of the materials complicates the reading. Editor: Indeed. Dzama’s use of symbols forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves and the narratives we construct. Curator: The intentional rawness does invite us to examine power dynamics and control. Editor: It's a haunting little piece.
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This untitled drawing shows a group of six naked humans approaching a clothed bear. Standing upright on two legs, the bear wears a long green gown or coat that is closed at the throat and covers its body; its human pose and the scale of its hands and feet suggests that it may be a human wearing a bear mask rather than a bear behaving like a human. Of the group of five men and a single woman, four display grisly wounds: an arm has been severed at the shoulder; a foot and ankle have been removed at mid calf; a triangular wedge has been cut from a head removing the entire face from forehead to cheekbone to chin; and intestines flop out of a vertical slit in the stomach and chest of a man, who gestures expressively with his left hand while attempting to push them back in with his right. Two of these unfortunate characters reach out towards the bear as though in supplication; the two people without wounds – a man and a woman in the background – hold their arms across their chests as though in self-protection. Drawn in black ink and coloured in watercolour paint, the figures float in the neutral ground provided by the creamy Manila paper on which they have been depicted, with no further clues as to the narrative evoked.
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