PIETER HUGO
2013-01-07This new series of photographs (2011 – 2012), on show for the first time, consists of nearly one hundred close-up portraits of the artist and his friends, all of whom have made South Africa their home or who are from there. Through a digital process of converting colour images to black and white while manipulating the colour channels, Hugo emphasizes the pigment (melanin) in his sitters’ skins so they appear heavily marked by blemishes and sun damage. Damages that are common to all human beings. As the result, these images denounce the contradictions of racial distinctions based on skin colour. Discriminations that, from Hugo’s point of view, remain ineradicable even in hell, as Morrissey says in his ominous song: “Our skin | And our blood | And our bones | Don’get in your way | Making you ill | The way they did | When we lived | Oh, There is a place | A place in hell | Reserved | For me and my friends”.
Opposite – Yasser Booley, 2011
Exhibition runs through till January 19th, 2013
Extraspazio Gallery
Via San Francesco di Sales 16/a
I – 00165
Rome
Italy
