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Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women by Christina Lamb (2025)

Warning: This review contains details of really disgusting and evil sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls that goes far beyond rape. If you’re of a sensitive disposition or prone to nightmares, don’t read it.

The more places I went to, the more prevalent I found rape was.

‘It is an everlasting nightmare.’
(Lola Narcisa Claveria, Filipino survivor of Japanese sex slavery, page 351)

This is a deeply upsetting but profoundly important book, often devastatingly depressing but sometimes genuinely inspiring. Christina Lamb is an award-winning journalist who has covered a variety of warzones in her career as well as writing 10 factual books. From early in her career she realised just how prevalent rape was as a weapon of war, not just as random outrages, but used systematically to demoralise enemy forces and terrorise entire populations. What she learned about the vicious sexual abuse of women in conflict after conflict was sickening and disgusting. But she also came to realise that the scale of the violence and abuse against women was often overlooked in journalism and history books overwhelmingly written by men (p.459); and by international bodies and courts more often than not run by men.

Everything has to start with the evidence and this means the first-hand testimony of the survivors. Telling their stories not only offers some form of closure for the victims, and the psychological validation of knowing someone believes them. It is also the start of gathering evidence, for use not only in possible court proceedings but to begin to be used in larger historical narratives, to begin to redress the gaping silence about one of the most overlooked and neglected parts of war and conflict – the unspeakable crimes, violence and abuse directed against women and girls, often on an industrial scale.

‘When I saw them laughing and humiliating us, I decided we needed to break the silence. If we didn’t talk about what we went through, and if they were not punished, what could we expect from their children but the same or greater evil?’ (Bakira Hasecic, founder of Association of Women Victims of War in Bosnia, p.167)

And so this substantial book (474 pages) records Lamb’s odyssey, over a seven year period, to track down, interview and record the testimonies of women who have suffered unbelievable horrors in conflict after conflict around the world.

Destinations

Lamb goes to:

2016 August: Leros, Greece The Greek island of Leros was used to house refugees from war in the Middle East including Yazidis who had been enslaved and trafficked by Islamic State.

2016: Baden-Wurtenberg The German province which took in 1,100 Yazidi women and children who had been treated as sex slaves by ISIS.

2016: Northeastern Nigeria: On 15 April 2014 the brutal Islamic terror group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 mostly Christian schoolgirls from the town of Chibok and carried them off into sexual slavery. #BringBackOurGirls or #BBOG went viral. Hardly any of the girls have been recovered.

2017 December: Bangladesh: Kutupalong To interview survivors of the 2017 massacres and mass rapes of Rohynga women by Burmese soldiers. In three months more than 650,000 were driven out of the west Burmese state of Rakhine, two-thirds of the Rohynga population.

Every single shack had terrible stories and I had never come across such widespread violation of women and girls. (p.75)

Bangladesh: Liberation War Museum, Dhaka and Sirajganj Up to 400,000 were women raped by Pakistani soldiers in Bangladesh’s war of independence as official Pakistan military policy. Lamb learns that the survivors were called birangonas from the Bengali word bir meaning war heroine (p.92).

‘Often when the women were raped the soldiers had grabbed their babies and stomped on them to death or thrown them so hard their brains had come out.’ (Safina; p.110)

Rwanda Aftermath of the 1994 Hutu genocide of Tutsis, itself the sequel to the 1959 Hutu Revolution, and pogroms of 1963 and 1973.

‘Of course they raped me… Wherever you were hiding under a tree a man would find you and rape you and sometimes kill you. There were lots of different men doing this and they used sticks and bottles into the private parts of many women right up to their stomach…’ (Serafina Mukakinani, p.132)

2018, March: Yugoslavia: Sarajevo The appalling atrocities of the Serbs in Bosnia, and the heroic efforts of Bakira Hasecic and her Association of Women Victims of War, founded in 2003, to bring the Serb torturers, murderers and rapists to justice.

Yugoslavia: Srebrenica Dragana Vucetic, senior forensic anthropologist at the International Commission of Missing Persons. On 11 July 1995 Serb militias took away about 8,300 Muslim men and boys, drove them out into fields or football grounds, then massacred them, shooting or bludgeoning them to death. Dr Branca Antic-Stauber who runs a charity for rape survivors and uses horticulture therapy.

2018, October: Berlin Stories of the vast mass rapes of German women and girls during the Red Army’s conquest of eastern Germany and Berlin at the end of the Second World War. In towns and villages every woman from eight to eighty was raped multiple times. ‘It was an army of rapists’ (Natalya Gesse, Soviet war correspondent, p.194) It is estimated that up to 2 million women and girls were rapes and scores of thousands of Germans committed suicide, and killed their children, rather than fall into the hands of the Russians.

2018, November: Buenos Aires In 1976 a military junta seized control of Argentina and rules for 7 years during which up to 30,000 leftists, trade unions and activists were kidnapped off the streets and ‘disappeared’. Estela Barnes de Carlotta, president of the Grandmothers or Las Abuelas (p.214).

2018, March: Mosul Lamb attends the hurried trials of a handful of the 30,000 or so people charged with being members of ISIS. Justice is a farce. The court doesn’t consider rape as a separate offence, all offences are grouped together as terrorism.

2018, April: Iraq: Dohuk The prevalence of suicide among Yazidi survivors of ISIS sex slavery.

2019, February: Democratic Republic of Congo: Bukavu In 2010 Congo was called the rape capital of the world. Lamb interviews Dr Denis Mukwege, founder of the Panzi Foundation, who has treated more rape victims than any other doctor in the world.

In the Second Congo War stories of women who were not only gang raped but then shot in the vagina, or had bayonets shoved in their vagina, or sticks soaked in fuel which was then set alight. Lamb discovers that Dr Mukwege’s clinic is seeing more and more raped babies. Some men believe that raping babies will give them magical powers; they are told this by witchdoctors (p.337).

In a gruelling book this chapter (chapter 13, pages 300 to 334) contains probably the worst atrocities (the 86-year-old who was raped, women’s vaginas set alight or hacked off, the mother who was forced at gunpoint to eat her own baby); but also the most inspiring moments. Lamb meets the inspiring Christine Schuler Deschryver, founder of City of Joy, a safe haven for survivors in Congo.

‘It’s about giving a woman value… I hug them and then they are healed and people say I have magic hands but it’s just love… I’m convinced you can change the world only by love’ (p.330)

It also contains the most telling evidence of the way rape used as a weapon of mass terrorisation is tied into broader economic and political structures. Because Deschryver points out that 1) Congo contains more of the rare metals needed to create mobile phones and batteries (cobalt, coltan) than any other country on earth; 2) if you drew a map of the rapes you’d see they cluster around mining areas, and so 3) rape is used as a strategy of terror by the militias and groups who control the mines and the regions around them. Which leads her onto her fourth point, 4) if the international community really wanted to end conflict in the Congo it could but, in Deschryver’s view, it suits multinational corporations to preserve Congo as an unstable mess the better to plunder the country of its cobalt, coltan and gold (p.331).

Democratic Republic of Congo: Kavumu Village where scores of babies and very small girls have been abducted, raped and their genitals destroyed, allegedly by the ‘Army of Jesus’, a militia controlled by a local warlord whose members have been told by a witchdoctor that the blood from raped and mutilated babies will make them invulnerable in battle (p.339). Although the warlord was eventually taken to court and convicted, the case went to appeal and none of the villagers knows whether he and his henchmen are in prison or not. Meanwhile, having lost all faith in the justice system, they have started to take the law into their own hands with lynchings and beheadings of suspect young men (p.348). Thus, chaos.

Manila Lamb meets surviving ‘comfort women’, enslaved by the occupying Japanese Army during the Second World War. They prefer to the term lolas which means grandmother in the local Tagalog language and which they use as an honorific, hence Lola Narcisa and Lola Estelita.

Concluding chapter 2020

Sexual violence against men

  • in eastern Congo a quarter of men in conflict zones have experienced sexual violence
  • in Afghanistan bacha bazi or the abuse of boys is common
  • in Syrian prisons under Bashar al-Assad, men and boys were submitted to horrifying sexual violence

The challenge of achieving justice Lamb jumps between a number of cases, showing the dedicated work of investigators, researchers, lawyers, prosecutors and judges, but how gruellingly slow it is and how pitifully few convictions are achieved. The Yazidis wait, the Rohingya wait for justice.

Guatemala During the 36-year-long civil war over 100,000 women were raped, mostly Mayans in an attempt to exterminate their ethnicity (p.387). In 2016 11 Mayan women secured the conviction of a retired army officer for sexually enslaving them.

Peru Over 5,000 women raped during the 11-year-long civil war with Shining Path guerrillas.

Colombia Sexual crimes have been included in crimes heard by the tribunal set up at the end of the 52-year-long civil war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Chad Successful conviction of Chad’s despicable sadist president, Hissène Habré, who ruled through a reign of terror till his overthrow in 1990. In 2000 he was arrested and put on trial in neighbouring Senegal. In 2016 he was convicted of crimes against humanity, torture and rape and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Women in charge Lamb makes the telling point that most of these convictions were only secured when women were judges or prosecutors in the case.

2025 update

2022, May, Ukraine: Berestianka The Russians are back and they’re raping again. And looting everything they can to take back to their pitiful slum of a country. Gang rapes, torture, rape in front of the rest of the family etc (p,409). Rewarded by Putin on their return home. According to Lamb domestic violence is not criminalised in Russia and widely accepted. Figures. Whenever I read about Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky despising the decadent West, this is what I think of. Russia, home of domestic violence, epidemic alcoholism and rapists.

For the first time Ukraine established a court and started prosecuting Russian war criminals while the war was still ongoing (as it is today).

2023, autumn, Tel Aviv On 7 October 2023 Hamas fighters broke through the wall dividing Gaza from Israel and went on a rampage at multiple sites, massacring 1,200 civilians and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages. Lamb meets survivors, and speaks to the many first responders, therapists and women’s activists regarding the widespread evidence of sexual violence against the women victims: gang rapes and sexual mutilation i.e. shooting women in the vagina. In her interviewees’ opinion the intention was the most primitive one imaginable of attacking your enemies’ procreative ability, plus the more modern one of spreading not just terror but horror. The barbaric cruelty was exemplary in the sense that it was intended to traumatise an entire nation (which, arguably, it did).

Hebron in the West Bank. Lamb meets Palestinians who live under extraordinarily tight Israeli supervision, and then survivors of sexual violence inflicted by the Israeli Defence Force, and lawyers and NGOs who have reported on it. Interestingly, the main targets have been men and boys, designed to cause maximum humiliation in revenge for 7 October. The accusations of sexual humiliation in captivity sound identical to the Americans at Abu Ghraib.

‘It was me and two other prisoners and three border police. They filmed us naked then began to touch our bodies and make jokes and insulted us. One of them had a metal detector which he tried to put in our anuses.’ (Palestinian Thaer Fakhoury, p.448)

Avignon, December 2024 Lamb is introduced to Gisèle Pelicot, the woman drugged by her  husband who then invited men from a website group to come to their home and rape her. The police found thousands of videos on her husband’s laptop clearly identifying the men which allowed a trial to go forward with 50 accused. The key thing is she waived her right to anonymity in order to speak out and so became a heroine to anti-rape activists, feminists and ordinary people around the world.

Summary When she completed the first edition in 2020 Lamb couldn’t imagine that sexual violence in conflict would return to Europe, in the form of Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women, or the horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel, or the eruption of brutal civil war in Sudan. Every year the UN presents a report on conflict-related sexual violence. The 2024 report concluded that conflict-related sexual violence is increasing.

Historical retrospective

Spain The really systematic mass rape of large populations of women probably first occurred in the Spanish Civil War 1936 to 1939. It was carried out by General Franco’s Falangist forces. ‘Not just rape but appalling evisceration of peasant women of Andalucia and Estremadura’, including the branding of their breasts with fascist symbols (historian Antony Beevor, quoted p.203).

Nanking The rape of Nanking, December 1937 to January 1938, where the Japanese accompanied mass murder of Chinese civilians with mass rape of women and girls.

Comfort women Euphemism for the hundreds of thousands of women and girls, predominantly from Japanese-occupied Asian countries, who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces before and during World War II.

Vietnam War 1961 to 1973: My Lai massacre and Tet Offensive.

Khmer Rouge 1975 to 1979. Cambodians murdered 2 million other Cambodians accompanied by mass rape.

Turkish invasion of Cyprus 1974, triggered widespread Turkish soldier rape of Greek women.

Timeline

1863 Abraham Lincoln issues general order 100 making rape carried out by soldiers of the Union Army punishable by death.

1919 Commission of Responsibilities established with rape near the top of the list of 32 war crimes.

1946 but at the war crimes tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo not a single prosecution for sexual violence.

1949 Geneva Convention, Article 27:

Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.

1973 Bangladesh declares rape a crime against humanity.

1993 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY):

Men and women came forward to recount evils beyond imagining – women and girls locked up in schools and suffering repeated anal, oral and vaginal rape, people having their tongues cut off, or being burned alive as human torches as they ‘screamed like cats’ (p.160)

1994 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) established in Arusha in Tanzania: Lamb interviews raped Tutsi women who testified in the first rape-as-war-crime trial. It was the first time rape was recognised as an instrument of genocide and prosecuted as a war crime.

‘I was raped countless times. The last group that raped me were so many people and one man shouted, “I can’t use my penis in that dirty place so I’ll use a stick.” I know many women who died like that. They sharpened the sticks and forced them right through their vaginas.’
(Cecile Mukurugwiza, p.141)

1998 first conviction for rape as a war crime.

1998 Rome Statute which established the International Criminal Court defined rape as a war crime.

2000 UN Security Council Resolution 1325 was the first formal and legal document from the Security Council that required parties in a conflict to prevent violations of women’s rights, to support women’s participation in peace negotiations and in post-conflict reconstruction, and to protect women and girls from wartime sexual violence; for ‘the greater inclusion of women in peace and security’.

2008 UN Security Council passed Resolution 1820 stating that ‘rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide’.

2009 established the office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

2010 Bangladesh sets up an International Crimes Tribunal. As of 2019 88 collaborators and party leaders had been tried for torture, murder and rape.

2011 In a video sent to a Nobel Women’s Initiative conference about sexual violence, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi said:

‘Rape is used in my country as a weapon against those who only want to live in peace, who only want to assert their basic human rights. Especially in the areas of ethnic nationalities, rape is rife. It is used as a weapon by armed forces to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and to divide our country.’

2014 then UK Foreign Secretary William Hague organised a four-day conference calling for the end of sexual violence in conflict.

2016 International Criminal Court convicts Pierre Bemba of murder, rape and pillage carried out by his men during the 2002-3 war in the Central Africa Republic.

2018 Nobel Peace Prize awarded jointly to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict”

2019 first conviction by the International Criminal Court for rape in wartime.

2019 report of the UN Special Representative listed 19 countries where women are being raped in war, by 12 armies and police forces and 41 non-state actors.

2019 Gambia took Myanmar to court over the Rohingya genocide, the first time one state had taken another to court over war crimes it had committed. Tried at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, resulting in orders against Myanmar carrying out any further genocide.

2020 first criminal trial of a member of Islamic State for crimes against the Yazidi, held in Germany, resulting in conviction and life imprisonment.

Learnings

Systematic mass rape, sexual violence, sexual torture and sexual mutilation are far more widespread than the bleakest pessimist could ever have expected.

Rape in conflict is rarely ad hoc, random and incidental. More often it is the result of encouragement or orders from the highest levels of military and political leadership, as in: mass rapes in Germany; mass rapes in Rwanda; mass rapes in Bosnia; mass rapes in Syria, and so on.

These kinds of mass rapes are now recognised, not as accidental by-products of the chaos of war, but as conscious war strategies, and as such, defined as war crimes. They are also associated with genocide, the conscious attempt to wipe out a people or group.

The genocidal intent is demonstrated in cases like the mass rape of Bangladeshi women and girls by the army of Pakistan, or the mass rapes of Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs, or the mass rape of Rohingya women by Burmese soldiers. In each instance the intent wasn’t sexual per se, the intent was to wipe out the victims’ ethnic group by breeding a new generation with the blood of the conquerors in them. In Bangladesh:

‘They had orders of a kind from Tikka Khan [Pakistan’s military governor in the East]… What they had to do was impregnate as many Bengali women as they could… so there would be a whole generation of children in East Pakistan that would be born with blood from the West.’ (p.97)

In Bosnia:

The victims ranged from between six to seventy years old and were raped repeatedly and often kept captive for several years. Many women were forcibly impregnated and held until termination of the pregnancy was impossible. The women were treated as property and rape was used with the intent to intimidate, humiliate and degrade. (p.156)

This same motive – ethnic triumphalism – explains why foetuses were cut out of pregnant women, babies were bludgeoned to death, and children were shot or had their throats cut.

Speaking about it helps. Sharing their stories in safe, supportive environments helps the survivors.

‘It’s all about giving them respect and them owning their stories. After a month, when they begin to tell their stories, sometimes OMG… and the transformation after six is huge. We turn pain into power and give victims strength to be leaders in their communities.’ (Christine Schuler Deschryver, founder of City of Joy, Congo, p.327)

But it never goes away. These women are profoundly damaged forever, as are their families, all their relationships, and their wider communities. And that was the intention.

‘That’s why rape really was a calculated weapon. The fellows who raped them and planned to rape them: they knew you either die now or die later but you’ll never be human again after this ordeal.’ (Rwanda Justice Minister Johnston Busingye, p.153)

As much or more healing comes from having the state formally recognise their plight, a formal recognition that it happened and that it was a crime.

‘It’s not possible to heal from this forever but it helps to speak about it as soon as possible and to share the story with someone compassionate. What I have seen definitely helps their healing is when perpetrators get punished because that gives the victim confirmation by authority she was not the one at fault for what happened to her and that she’s innocent.’ (Dr Branca Antic-Stauber, p.190)

‘Talking to the judges was the beginning of my rehabilitation. For so many years society did not want to listen… But now we could tell our side of the story… Seeing the life sentences at long last, after all they did to us, truly, it gives you your life back.’ (Graciela Garcia Romero, p.238)

In conservative societies state recognition can support recognition at local, village and family level. A striking example is the way the first president of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who recognised the horrific scale of the mass rapes carried out by the Pakistan army and coined a term of praise for the victims, calling them Birangona, or ‘war heroines’.

Better still, though, is the healing effect of watching their perpetrators brought to justice, tried and convicted of their crimes. This validates the victims’ experiences and assures them that the world around them understands and values their suffering.

‘Their actions changed the law and criminal justice for every woman. The women showed you can take the worst trauma and turn it into a story of strength and victory.’ (Erica Barks-Ruggles, US ambassador to Kigali, on the rape survivors who travelled to the Rwanda genocide tribunal to testify against the perpetrators, p.149)

The only problem is it happens pitifully rarely.

Meanwhile, many of the women interviewed wanted their perpetrators to be killed (p.119).

‘I want the worst things to happen to the men that did this to me. I want them to die not in a quick or humane way but slowly, slowly, so they know what it’s like to do bad things to people.’ (Naima, a Yazidi enslaved by ISIS, p.264)

‘I feel so angry at what those Japanese did to me and my family, that if I saw them today I would kill them.’ (Lola Narcisa Claveria, Filipino woman enslaved by the Japanese p.357)

‘I hate them so much and wish death to all of them and Putin.’ (Vika, Ukrainian woman raped by Russian soldiers, p.403)

Charities have discovered that a good way to draw survivors out of their often disastrous mental suffering is to give them tasks, jobs, skills training and agency. Like the farm bought by Christine Schuler Deschryver, to be run by rape survivors in Congo (p.329) or Dr Branca Antic-Stauber’s idea of setting up a rose-growing business to employ survivors in Bosnia (p.185)

No index

There’s no index. Why?

Similarly no list of the organisations mentioned in each country, or organisations addressing sexual violence generally. I supply my own list below.

Human history

Well, I’ve explained my view of human history in a separate blog post:

History is an abattoir. What was written down is a tiny fraction of what happened, and it was written by the educated and privileged, mostly sucking up to kings and khans. The reality of human existence for most humans for most of human history has been unspeakably brutal.

Last thought

In his brilliant series of books about conflict and international order in the 1990s, Michael Ignatieff divides the world into zones of conflict and zones of safety. Every day I thank my lucky stars that I was born and lived all my life in what he calls a ‘zone of safety’. Way before you get to my white privilege or my male privilege, I give thanks for my safety privilege.

Credit

‘Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women’ by Christina Lamb was first published by William Collins in 2020. I read the updated 2025 paperback edition.

Organisations mentioned in the text

Support organisations

At the end of the Unsilenced exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, the curators give a list of support organisations, which I repeat here:

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A World In Common: Contemporary African Photography @ Tate Modern

This is an outstanding, wonderful exhibition bringing together some 150 photographs (and a few installations and videos) by no fewer than 36 photographers and artists from across Africa. It is full of breath-taking and beautiful works, suggesting a continent alive with wonderfully creative, innovative artists.

It’s divided into three ‘chapters’, each of which are sub-divided into themes. To quote the curators:

The first chapter is rooted in ancient African cultures and traditions which have survived periods of struggle and resistance. Inspired by Pan-African liberation movements, the second chapter looks at photography’s ability to produce counter histories – archival practices and the agency of photographer and subject are brought into focus. The third chapter explores the impact of globalisation and the climate emergency.

Chapter 1: Identity and tradition

Queens, Kings and Gods

For centuries Africa was conquered and colonised by European countries. The artists in room one pay tribute to the monarchs and matriarchs who resisted colonial conquest and occupation. The photographers here invoke the heritage of kingdoms such as the Asante of Ghana and the Yoruba of Nigeria, who are descended from the goddesses and gods of the ancient spiritual capital, Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Thus a series of big, beautifully clear portraits of traditional monarchs of the present day by George Osodi (born Nigeria 1974).

Installation view of ‘Nigerian Monarchs’ series by George Osodi (2012 to 2022) in ‘World in Common’ at Tate Modern (photo by the author)

There is a set from the ‘We Live in Silence; sequence by Kudzanai Chiurai (born 1981, Zimbabwe) which elaborately recreates biblical narratives, history painting and Christian iconography which themselves turn out to be scenes from the 1967 film, ‘Soleil Ô’, by Mauritanian-born French filmmaker Med Hondo. So, worlds within worlds…

We Live in Silence IV by Kudzanai Chiurai (2017) courtesy of the artist and the Goodman Gallery © Kudzanai Chiurai

Spiritual worlds

The next room gestures towards the complex and diverse history of religion across this vast continent. There’s a set of photographic self portraits by Khadija Saye (1992 to 2017, born and worked in the UK, of Gambian heritage). You might recall that it was one of these photos that British artist Chris Ofili used as the centrepiece for his huge new site-specific Requiem for Grenfell Tower at Tate Britain. In this sequence Saye photographed herself performs a series of rituals using sacred objects that combine her African, Christian and Islamic heritage.

Installation view of the ‘Dwelling: in the space we breathe’ series by Khadija Saye (2017) (photo by the author)

At the end of the room is a stunning work, a set of five huge digital photos arranged to create a striking tableau by Maïmouna Guerresi (born 1951, born in Italy, works in Senegal). Titled ‘M-eating – Students and Teacher’ it shows four girls and an older man sitting around a long table draped in a yellow cloth. The wall behind the table is inscribed with the Basmala, a Muslim prayer recited to elicit God’s blessings. It’s a huge and really powerful image of absorption and contemplation but, more than that, it’s just a beautifully clear and vividly coloured composition.

‘M-eating – students and teacher’ by Maïmouna Guerresi (2012) Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim

Masks

The next room is devoted to the role of masks in African religion, ritual, folklore and culture. There’s a stunning series by Edson Chagas (born 1977 in Angola), the Tipo Passe series of sitters wearing contemporary clothes but traditional Bantu masks. ‘Tipo passe’ is Portuguese for passport and the frontal composition references passport photography.

Installation view of the ‘Tipo Passe’ series by Edson Chagas (2014) (Photo by the author)

Opposite these is a series of really wonderful photos by Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou (born 1965, works in Benin), instances from the Egungun series.

Installation view of ‘Egungun’ series by Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou (photo by the author)

As the curators explain:

Egungun is a Yoruba masquerade practice which calls upon the spirits of departed ancestors. Through ceremonial drumming and dance, ancestral spirits inhabit the bodies of Egungun practitioners to pass on blessings and guide the passage of the dead to the spirit world. Clothing plays an important role in Egungun masquerade – elaborate masks and fabrics must completely seal the performer’s body. Agbodjélou’s performers wear costumes which layer expensive foreign materials and traditional Yoruba cloth. This combination of the traditional and the contemporary parallels the Egungun’s complex role as mediators between the world of the living and the dead.

They’re absolutely stunning, vivid photos.

Untitled from the ‘Egungun’ series by Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou

There’s a massive video piece by Wura-Natasha Ogunji titled ‘Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman?’ and showing women dressed in colourful (traditional?) clothes, dragging kegs of water roped to their ankles through the backstreets of Lagos. Here’s a clip:

You may not be altogether surprised to learn that it’s a feminist piece. Their costumes evoke images of Egungun masquerade, a Yoruba practice that manifests ancestors’ spirits and is traditionally reserved for men, and Ogunji explains the piece is designed to question the heavy labour still done by many women in traditional societies.

Chapter 2: Counter Histories

The next room is big with a lot going on. Along one wall is a series of relatively small ‘family portraits’. These loving portraits of family members gesture towards the long history of studio portraiture that gave agency to African photographers and their sitters, letting them create domestic alternatives to the imperial rhetoric of colonial postcards, posters and magazines. These included pioneering photographers such as James Barnor in Ghana and Lazhar Mansouri in Algeria, photographing families and individuals who would gather proudly to have their portraits taken, often for the first time. All fair enough, but they’re relatively small and struggle to compete with the other, enormous offerings in the same space.

Most striking is the large assembly of old box files arranged on a pebbly red base. This is ‘A History of a City in a Box’ by Ndidi Dike (born UK, works in Nigeria). These old file boxes are filled with archival documents, including colonial-era postcards and photographs, and then carefully choreographed on sand and soil. It is a general metaphor for the way information was power for the old colonial authorities and was hidden away in files and folders but then, during the period of independence, colonial archives were abandoned, hidden and destroyed. And yet…that information decayed, became irrelevant, barely concealing the true earth of the country, its geological bedrock, symbolising the country’s real roots.

Installation view of ‘A History of a City in a Box’ by Ndidi Dike in room 4 of ‘World in Common’ at Tate Modern © Tate (Lucy Green)

In the centre, at the back of n this photo, you can see a set of four figures, blown-up and pasted onto cardboard bases, these are the work of Samson Kambalu (born 1975 in Malawi, works in the UK). They’re actually cardboard cut-outs of African soldiers use photographs sourced from the Weston Library in Oxford, UK. They represent the unnamed infantry who fought for the British Empire during the First and Second World Wars and were known as the King’s African Rifles. The cardboard indicates the soldiers’ expendable status to colonial powers. Behind them is a patchwork of quilts inspired by Kambalu’s childhood memories of collecting bubblegum cards of world flags.

Next to them, on the right, you can see a sequence of three big pieces. These are from the sequence ‘Figures’ by Malala Andrialavidrazana (born 1971 in Madagascar, works in France). These are collages of maps, fragments of bank notes, record sleeves and other archival documents which build up into complex, evocative collages. The maps are, as you might expect, old-style colonial-era maps, the idea being that maps were used by the imperial countries to define and control; while the images are of strong African figures, including striking portraits of ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti and Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. These are strong, highly impactful images.

‘Figures 1861’ by Malala Andrialavidrazana (2016) at ‘World in Common’ at Tate Modern © Malala Andrialavidrazana

Away on the opposite side of the room is a large alcove with a distinctive black-and-white tiled floor, containing three big vivid sets of photographs by three different photographers.

They are, from left to right, four photos by Ruth Ginika Ossai (Nigeria), three by Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco) and four by Atong Atem (born 1994 in South Sudan, works in Australia).

Ruth Ginika Ossai’s portraits are carefully staged on floormats made of Astroturf and parquet-style laminate flooring. The backdrops are inspired by the special effects featured in Igbo gospel music videos and Nollywood films and give them a super-real feel.

The central three are by Hassan Hajjaj in a series called ‘Kesh Angels’ (named after the Hells Angels and the city’s motorbike culture). These are brilliant. The women are not only wearing vivid djellabas and veils but are posed in deliberately in-yer-face, take-no-**** attitudes. To cap it all, the frames are inset with tins of popular products, one appears to be lamb meat, another of tomato juice. So they’re stylish, stroppy, modern and funny.

Installation view of ‘Kesh Angels’ by Hassan Hajjaj (photo by the author)

To the right of the Kesh Angels are four portraits by Atong Atem. Atem portrays friends who are fellow members of Australia’s African diaspora. She says: This body of work honours the South Sudanese Dinka tradition of record-keeping and archiving as an intimate cultural practice.’ Aren’t they beautiful, brightly colourful, densely patterned, vibrantly alive?

‘Adut and Bigoa’ by Atong Atem (2015) courtesy of the artist and MARS Gallery © Atong Atem

Chapter 3: Imagined Futures

The final room contains yet more series of really strong photographs. The theme is the environmental challenges facing Africa, specifically its overpopulated cities and its degraded environment plus, of course, the heating up and drying out caused by global warming.

Kiripi Katembo (1979 to 2015, born and worked the Democratic Republic of the Congo) discovered that people in his home town of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, didn’t like being photographed. But he could get away with photographing their reflections in the city’s countless large puddles and pools of water. Often these contained rocks or building rubble, but Katembo discovered that the intrusion of these objects into the crystal clear reflections created an interesting disturbance. As the curators describe it: usually depicted as a chaotic and busy capital, ‘here Kinshasa appears as a dream-like landscape populated by shadows and unidentified objects.’

Installation view of ‘Un regard’ by Kiripi Katembo (photo by the author)

There’s a striking series of large black and white photos by Mário Macilau (born 1984, born and works in Mozambique). These, as the images instantly convey, document the workers of the Hulene landfill site in Maputo, Mozambique. Obviously it shows human beings reduced to picking through rubbish to glean a living, and, of course, affected by the toxic substances released into the air and soil by the widespread practice of burning.

‘Breaking News’ from ‘The Profit Corner’ series by Mário Macilau (2015) © Mário Macilau, Courtesy Ed Cross Fine Art

Related to the same topic of environmental destruction, but in a completely different register, is a series of 3 wonderful photos by Fabrice Monteiro (born 1972 in Belgium, works in Senegal). They’re from his ‘Prophecies’ series and they are absolutely brilliant.

Untitled #1 (2013) from ‘The Prophecy’ series 2013 to 2015 by Fabrice Monteiro in ‘World in Common’ at Tate Modern

‘The Prophecy’ series captures environmental issues facing communities in Dakar, Senegal, from forest fires to coastal erosion. Spookily tall spiritual figures, inspired by West African masquerade and animism, rise up out of the rubbish dumps, themselves made of rubbish and detritus. They’re stunning.

And next to them is arguably the best set in the show, the ones the curators have (wisely) chosen as the posters, a set of four quite stunning, beautifully, staged, semi-abstract photos by Aïda Muluneh (born and works in Ethiopia, 1974).

Installation view of ‘Water Life’ series by Aïda Muluneh, being (top row): The Shackles of Limitation, Steps (bottom row): Star Shine Moon Glow and The Sorrows We Bear

These were commissioned by the charity Water Aid and depict – in an obviously highly stylised way – ‘rural water access and its impact on women’s rights, well-being and education.’ The impact of global warming will obviously further degrade access to drinking water for hundreds of millions of people in the poorest countries. But clearly the thing here is Muluneh’s stunning use of a limited palette of bright blue and red, and her incorporation of traditional African body painting and dress.

Epilogue

The final (small-ish, corridor-like) room in the exhibition hosts videos by two artists. On the whole I don’t like videos. I don’t have the patience – the photos I’ve highlighted earlier in the show all make their impacts with dramatic immediacy whereas art videos are, by and large, extremely slow.

The most striking is ‘In Praise of Still Boys’ by Julianknxx (born 1988 in Sierra Leone, works in the UK).

The 3 or 4 minutes of this I sat and watched featured lots of footage of a very young Queen Elizabeth II visiting somewhere in Africa (Freetown?), white British sailors steering a motor launch through canoes rowed by local Africans, then British troops from the (I’m guessing) 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone (almost none of this is shown in the trailer, above). And this harking on about the British colonial legacy prompted the train of thought which follows in my political commentary on the exhibition.

Political commentary

I hugely enjoyed this impressive, wide-ranging exhibition about African photography as an aesthetic i.e. visual and psychological experience. But aesthetics and politics are far apart, at least in this exhibition and Tateworld more generally. As political analysis or commentary, this exhibition was rubbish. Dire. Seriously misleading. On and on and on and on and on the curators go about ‘colonialism’ which, for most of these countries, ended in the 1960s, 60 years ago, and on and on and on the curators and the artists go about the Atlantic Slave Trade, which Britain banned in 1807, 216 years ago.

In chapter 3 the curators optimistically claim that the featured artists ‘imagine multiple futures’ and cite Senegalese academic, musician and writer Felwine Sarr (born 1972) who calls for ‘Africans to think and formulate their own future’. In his 2016 book Afrotopia, Sarr writes:

‘Africa has always been the object of discourse by others. Now is the time to dream this utopia in Africa itself, to design Africa ourselves, to think, and to act for ourselves.’

Which immediately prompts two objections. 1) Dreaming isn’t going to get you anywhere, buddy. Practical policies might. See Paul Collier’s list of practical steps in his hard-headed book ‘The Bottom Billion’.

But more relevantly to this exhibition, 2) there’s almost nothing about the future, instead there is a sustained, deep immersion in the legacy of colonialism. Loads of the 36 photographers’ work is directly about colonialism, the colonial legacy, colonial control, colonial archives, ‘the colonial gaze’, colonial images, colonial photography, colonial identity cards, colonial posters, colonial postcards. The word ‘colonial’ occurs 26 times on the wall labels. Even if the artist isn’t themselves addressing it, you can bet the curators will drag in a reference to slavery or colonialism or both in their wall labels.

In other words, the overall effect of the exhibition is immensely backward-looking. It’s like a traumatised adult condemned to act out the abuse of their childhood again and again, with no hope of escape. Maps of colonial Africa, footage of colonial Africa, old box files from colonial Africa, old derelict buildings from colonial Africa, trying to escape from the Christian religion imposed by colonial Africa. Backwards backwards, everything relates backwards to a lost era of 60 years ago.

Here’s a timeline of the year and date African nations gained independence, just to make clear how long ago this all was.

24 December 1951: Libya
1 January 1956: Sudan
2 March 1956: Morocco
20 March 1956: Tunisia
6 March 1957: Ghana
2 October 1958: Guinea

1 January 1960: Cameroon
27 April 1960: Togo
26 June 1960: Madagascar
30 June 1960: DR Congo
1 July 1960: Somalia
1 August 1960: Benin
3 August 1960: Niger
5 August 1960: Burkina Faso
7 August 1960: Côte d’Ivoire
11 August 1960: Chad
13 August 1960: Central African Republic
15 August 1960: Congo
17 August 1960: Gabon
20 August 1960: Senegal
22 September 1960: Mali
1 October 1960: Nigeria
28 November 1960: Mauritania

27 April 1961: Sierra Leone
31 May 1961: South Africa

1 July 1962: Rwanda
1 July 1962: Burundi
3 July 1962: Algeria
9 October 1962: Uganda

12 December 1963: Kenya

24 April 1964: Tanzani (Tanganyika 9 December 1961 – Zanzibar 10 December 1963)
6 July 1964: Malawi
24 October 1964: Zambia

18 February 1965: Gambia

30 September 1966: Botswana
4 October 1966: Lesotho

We’re talking about the era of Sputnik. The era when the Berlin Wall was going up. Before the Beatles’ first LP. That is the era, of the 1940s and 50s, which so many of these artists, at least in their Tate interpretation, are harking back to, again and again and again.

This obviously indicates a glaring great gap, two gaps if you like, which are: 1) what happened in Africa during the 60 years since independence and 2) what is happening in Africa today?

Sixty years of mismanagement, civil war, famine and genocide

One wall label sports a quote from Kwame Nkrumah, first Prime Minister of Ghana, the first British African colony to become independent in 1957.

‘We believe in the rights of all peoples to govern themselves. We affirm the right of all colonial peoples to control their own destiny. All colonies must be free from foreign imperialist control.’

Nkrumah overflowed with utopian quotes about how socialism would bring peace and plenty to Africa, he was full of them (see the references to Nkrumah in my review of ‘The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence‘ by Martin Meredith).

What the Tate wall label does not mention is that Nkrumah went on to become a steadily more repressive figure, passing emergency laws, outlawing the opposition, creating a cult of personality, having himself referred to as the ‘the Man of Destiny’, ‘the Star of Africa’, ‘His High Dedication of Redeemer’ and so on. He was an outspoken supporter of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, receiving a Lenin Prize, tried to abolish tribalism and wasted money on vast white elephant building schemes. He made himself very unpopular with the rulers of neighbouring African countries when it was discovered that he was supporting various communist and guerrilla movements to overthrow their capitalist governments. In 1966 Nkrumah was himself overthrown in a coup by the army which set about de-Sovietising the economy and reversing most of his calamitous economic policies. At independence Ghana had a GDP on a par with South Korea, but decades of political instability, military coups and economic mismanagement brought the country to the brink of ruin. Ghana is now 83rd in the world rankings of GDP compared to South Korea at 13.

NONE of this is in the Tate exhibition, none of it, no politics, no economics, no contemporary history at all. Africa’s desperate history of secessions, civil wars, genocides, famines, economic mismanagement, rule by brutal Marxist murderers, by kleptocrats and homicidal dictators, NONE of that is here, none. It is all erased, made invisible, ignored, brushed under the carpet.

Instead what the wall labels repeat again and again and again are the only two tunes they know, the evils of colonialism (ended in the 1960s) and of the slave trade (ended 200 years ago). Simplistic binaries.

Why artists and curators simplify history and politics to make them more acceptable

In my review of Paul Danahar’s irritating book about the aftermath of the Arab Spring, I sketched out four reasons why even high-end (BBC, Channel 4) coverage of foreign affairs tends to be simplified and sanitised. These are:

1. Logistically easy It’s easier to get stories out of countries where journalists and film crews can operate freely, so countries with good infrastructure, like Israel or America, tend to be over-represented.

2. Familiar narratives Editors prefer sticking to super-familiar, easy narratives, my examples being the Arab-Israeli conflict and the (now defunct) struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Absolutely everyone was familiar with the outline of those stories which had taken on the simplicity of fairy tales. Pantomime narratives with pantomime goodies and baddies. Easy to understand, easy to write about, easy to feel moral indignation about, easy to go on marches about, all your emotions pre-packaged and ready to take away.

To give an example, bad stuff is happening in various parts of China (Xinjiang, Tibet) but my points 1 and 2 apply in that: 1) it’s difficult to get access to those places, and 2) the issues are complicated. But, for the sake of argument, say that a protest march in Hong Kong is broken up by riot police and – because it’s easy to access and easy to cover – it’s all over the front pages for days. Easy access. Easy issues. Somewhere we know about. Easy to relate to.

3. Britain-related Some places matter more to Brits than others because they used to be colonies or places where Brits lived and feel a residual attachment to, thus India, Hong Kong, Egypt, Kenya – or which we feel some kind of special responsibility for (the Middle East, all those lines on the map, the Balfour Declaration yadda yadda yadda). The result is that these countries are over-represented in British foreign news at the expense of everywhere else.

4. Student causes Lastly, there’s what you could call student politics. Some of these places are associated with big, simple-minded political causes. All good progressive people marched against apartheid in the 1980s. All good progressive people are outraged by Israel’s bombing of Gaza today. All good progressive people agree that China is not keeping to its bargain of letting Hong Kong remain a democracy. Etc.

In the same kind of way all good progressive people are shocked and disgusted by anything to do with the European empires. And all good progressive people are shocked etc by the slave trade.

These are hot button topics, guaranteed to win over the audience, please the crowd, which can’t fail to unite artists, curators and visitors in a cosy feeling of moral righteousness, moral superiority, grievance from the artists and grovelling apology by white gallery goers.

Slavery and the evils of empire are the new consensus topics – everyone agrees that they were utterly evil and that they explain everything about modern Africa.

All the artists chosen for this exhibition stick to the narrow line adopted by the curators that African history ceased some time in the 1960s, at the moment of independence, that nothing whatsoever has happened since then, that all Africans are still trying to cope with the trauma of imperialism or the trauma of the slave trade – and that absolutely nothing significant has happened since.

No military coups, civil wars, mad rulers, stupid socialist economics, thieving stealing looting leaders like Mobutu, psychopaths like Idi Amin, mass murderers like the Hutu regime in Rwanda, cannibals like the Emperor Bokassa, ruinous rebel leaders in Angola or Mozambique, warlord chaos in the Congo.

No African history beyond the 1960s is present in this exhibition because it doesn’t fit the simple-minded, pantomime-level narrative which many of the artists address and the curators almost obsessively promote – white slave traders / colonialists = evil, all black people = saintly victims.

I’m not saying the slave trade wasn’t bad or that colonialism wasn’t wretched, humiliating and shamelessly exploitative. Of course they were. And forms of neo-colonialism are obviously still alive and constraining African nations in all kinds of ways today. But that’s just the starting position: that’s the obvious stuff you need to process before moving on to a more sophisticated understanding of the situation.

You’re not going to begin to understand the plight of modern African countries unless you move on from the 1960s and engage with the 60 years of history since then. And then, once you’ve processed the 60 years since independence, it requires a further effort to engage with the host of military, economic and security issues which plague Africa today, in 2023.

Africa today

And what about the political and economic and social issues which face Africa today? Are these addressed in this exhibition? Is there any mention of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism across North Africa, of the havoc being wrought by al Qaeda, or Boko Haram, or al Shabaab? No. Nothing.

Is there any mention of China’s involvement in Africa over the last 20 years, buying up raw materials and rare metals and food in exchange for infrastructure projects? Mention of China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiatives all across Africa? Nothing.

Any mention of Russia’s growing involvement in North Africa, specifically through the Russian mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group? Nothing.

Mention of the US’s surprisingly extensive investment in army, navy and air force bases across the region in efforts to combat Islamic terrorists? Nothing.

Lots of complicated geopolitical, military, strategic and economic manoeuvring is going on all across Africa, right now, as we speak, and none of it is discussed, described or even mentioned in this immensely backward-looking exhibition.

Conclusion

So I really liked lots of the art on display, a lot of these photos are stunning and breath-taking, world class, outstanding, and it is such a relief to get away from America and the usual suspects of the art world. Congratulations to Tate for staging this exhibition so beautifully and bringing so many great photographers to our attention.

But as politics this show is a washout, a whitewash, a travesty, a systematic erasure of African history for the last 60 years in favour of a fairy-tale story about colonialism. It not only takes absolutely no account of Africa’s 60 years of troubled tragic post-colonial history but presents a complete blank when it comes to the complex, difficult, multi-sided political issues faced by Africa today. An artistic triumph  but when it comes to any serious discussion of the political, economic and social challenges of contemporary Africa, this exhibition is a travesty, seriously misleading in its omissions, elisions and simplifications of a long inconveniently complex history.

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by Simon on November 6, 2023  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on November 6, 2023

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2023/11/06/a-world-in-common-contemporary-african-photography-tate-modern/

Requiem by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain

If you enter Tate Britain by the sunken, southern, side entrance, from Atterbury Street, you enter a cool atrium space with the shop off to your right, Information ahead of you and the downstairs exhibition space off to your left. Also on the left is the broad wide staircase leading up to the main ground floor.

This staircase is now the site of a massive artwork by contemporary British artist Chris Ofili CBE, born 55 years ago in Manchester. This huge work is a requiem for the 72 people who died in the terrible fire at the Grenfell tower block in west London. It’s in three parts, painted onto the staircase’s three walls, which the artist has called ‘chapters’.

Chapter 1: Look. Look at this. Look at what we’ve done. Look at what is happening

According to Tate’s wall label:

The bowing figure on the left-hand wall at the top of the staircase is a prophet or witness. He presents the burning tower to us, as though conducting a ceremony of loss or a requiem. Confronted by the overwhelming tragedy of what has happened, his tears fall into a great ocean of despair. Here, Ofili traces the path of souls escaping desperate peril, moving through embers or plunging into the water, then circling around and away from the tower.

Chapter 1 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain

Khadija Saye, an introduction

One of those who died in the fire was Gambian-British artist Khadija Saye (1992 to 2017). She was just establishing her reputation. Ofili had met her and admired her work. In the corridor at the top of the staircase a screenprint of one of her works, Andichurai, is on display. It is a photograph showing her holding an andi churai or incense pot. Widely found in Gambian homes, the andi churai burns incense to drive away evil spirits in order to provide protection. In Gambian culture, the strong scent of the incense is closely associated with women and femininity.

Andichurai by Khadija Saye (2017) from the series ‘Dwelling: in this space we breathe’. Image courtesy of the Estate of Khadija Saye

Chapter 2: Change and transformation

This explains why Ofili placed a reversioning of Saye’s face, hand and incense pot at the centre of the second or central panel of the work.

Chapter 2 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain

Tate’s wall label explains:

Artist Khadija Saye is at the centre of an energy force, high up on the middle wall. She represents one of the souls. She holds an andichurai (a Gambian incense pot) to her ear, in a pose taken from her own artwork. This object was precious to Saye, as it belonged to her mother. It symbolises the possibility of transformation through faith, honouring Saye’s dual faith heritage of Christianity and Islam. Ofili invites us to imagine the sound of calm solace here – perhaps like the call of the ocean you hear when holding a shell to your ear.

Chapter 3: A place for redemption, healing and hope

As you turn on the stairs and come up the final flight, you walk alongside the third panel on your left This is harder to photograph than the other two. It continues the colour washes and the water imagery of the first two panels but the main feature is what appears to be a Greek-style faun playing on some pan pipes.

Chapter 3 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain

The wall label explains:

To the right, the spirit of the souls emerges from the water and sky to arrive in a paradise-like landscape, resting by the banks of the water under the shade of a beautiful branching tree. Two mythical beings play a sweet, hopeful melody on their instruments. The energy of the souls is drawn to this realm of extraordinary peace. The colours of the burning tower turn into a warm sunrise or sunset. The water contains our collective grief in the flow of tears. It also links to Venice, where Ofili and Saye met. The water connects London to Ofili’s home in Trinidad.

Contemplation

Once you’ve climbed the stairs you arrive at a balcony where you can sit on a comfy bench and take in the entire composition, or leaf through one of the printed guides to the work, the guide which I’ve just been quoting from.

It’s restful. It’s peaceful. It’s like a modern Christian chapel, maybe a chapel of rest, emphasised by the way everything focuses on the face of Saye at the centre of the central panel. And the bright and vibrant colours are very…very bright and attractive.

I’m used to Ofili’s works being large and colourful. I’m used to them having lots of confetti-like bits, in this case all the dark dots which radiate from the figure of Saye. He likes dotting his works.

As to whether I liked it or not, that’s harder to say. I commend Tate for commissioning the work, I think it’s a big, bold, colourful use of the space, I appreciate the sombreness of the subject matter and the way he’s created a narrative of redemption, of sorts, through the imagery.

And yet…I had nagging doubts. The composition really does draw your eye to the central cartouche containing Saye’s face and I found this weirdly, unaccountably, unpleasurably distorted.

Detail of Chapter 2 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain

Obviously Ofili’s image is not intended to be disrespectful, the very opposite, but I found it eerily off-putting, as if her face is melting. I take the point that she burned to death in a horrible tragedy, and that explains the wall of fire she’s circled by but…Well, I hesitate to say it, but the central image doesn’t really feel big enough or finished enough to justify the huge amount of wall space dedicated to it.

And, now I’ve started down this line I might as well go on and say I felt the same about the third and final panel. The first one is filled with the figure of the prophet bowing down to an image of the tower, which is strange and disturbing but is at least big – it commands the space. The second, central, panel has the visual dynamic of leading your eye up to the fiery cartouche. But the third wall is almost entirely just a continuation of the (vibrant tropical) colour washes from the first two, waves along the bottom and then what may or may not be the souls of the dead rising up across the same Pride Rainbow of colours. It’s only at the very end that something happens, with Ofili’s version of a faun playing pan pipes, done in his trademark loose and rather amateurish style. So there’s a lot of brightly decorated wall before there’s anything to really look at. It feels empty.

The faun: detail of chapter 3 of ‘Requiem for Grenfell’ by Chris Ofili @ Tate Britain

It’s a bold commission. It’s a big bold work. It’s on a deservedly national theme and is an admirable attempt at commemoration. But as an actual work, it left me a bit unsatisfied; I felt it didn’t have the emotional or visual punch that you’d expect from such a horrific subject. Big patches of the wall just seemed rather empty. Sorry.

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by Simon on November 5, 2023  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on November 5, 2023

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2023/11/05/requiem-chris-ofili-tate-britain/