Article
Magazine: Winter 2018
Think of the sharp touch of a blade's edge and how this sensation links Wangechi Mutu's Chorus Line (2008) and Melvin Edwards's Curtain for Friends (2015). It is not difficult to draw out a thematic continuity in both artworks, say that of violence; however, when the works are placed side by side, it is more a feeling that emanates from Mutu's female forms and Edwards's barbed wire and chain. The brutal associations of Edwards's print rematerialize in Mutu's process of cutting and pasting found photographs over watercolors to create exposed, acrobatic figures. Meanwhile, we can imagine the fused bodies in Mutu's Chorus Line gathering for a final bow behind Edwards's Curtain for Friends as if to suggest a mutual bond that emerges on the other side of violence. The works touch each other within a field of echoes and sensations that cannot be reduced to the logics of representation.
