A 'modern masterpiece' paints pandemic chaos on cloth made of fig-tree bark
The painting is as dazzling as it is unsettling, not only by virtue of its monumental size (8' 2 1/2" x 11' 5 7/8") but also its boisterous colors and panoramic view of figures in motion. As your gaze goes from left to right, you see a mass of people, many in white face masks, surging forward; bodies and angry faces hurtling through the air; an enraged, open-mouthed, disembodied face; reddish coral-colored whorls that look like angry, bloody whips.
What is going on here?
Kenyan-British artist Michael Armitagewhile moving between Nairobi and London during the COVID-19 pandemic. The work is a response to in the port city of Mombasa, Kenya, when passengers, unable to board severely overcrowded ferries in time to meet a government-imposed curfew, were beaten and tear-gassed by paramilitary police. According to curator Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi of the Museum of Modern Art, where the work now hangs, it is nothing less than "an apocalyptic foreboding that transcends the specific event in Mombasa to reflect the global upheaval and uncertainty of the pandemic moment."
