Anri Sala
Flutterby & Kinperton
2023
Two archival pigment prints
20 x 24.5 cm each
Unframed
Edition of 30 copies numbered and signed by the artist on a certificate, plus 3 artist’s proofs and 3 publisher’s proofs
The title of this edition clearly refers to “Madama Butterfly”, Puccini’s opera set in Nagasaki. Keeping this in mind, the two characters depicted in these black and white photographs can be seen as representations of Ms. Butterfly and Mr. Pinkerton, whose tragic love story is somehow summarized in the incompleteness of the two arcs of a circle placed next to each other – two gigantic fans, an echo to Japanese culture.
But the work is of course more than a matter of illustration. The play with the names (“Flutterby and Kinperton”) indicates a sense of strangeness and hybridization that is embodied by the mythological figures: a mix of god/goddess, human, and animal, augmented with technological attributes. Here, bodies, cultures and temporalities collide in a delicate, almost silent way.
Taken in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris when its famous Ferris wheel had just been disassembled, the photographs are also an ironical take on the notion of “public art,” which hints at the Keijiban’s own context. With its classical statues on their pedestal, disturbed and enhanced at the same time by their environment – and more specifically by a symbol of a funfair –, Flutterby and Kinperton manifests the interconnection of high culture and low culture, as well as the power of photography to step on other artistic disciplines.
Anri Sala's exhibition will take place at Keijiban from April 15 to May 14, 2023