Monday, January 02, 2012

Last Supper for Dictators

As I've discussed before, about a decade ago I did a huge pen and ink drawing entitled "Last Supper for Dictators".

The piece was exhibited at one of my solos at the old Fraser Gallery in Georgetown, and subsequently sold to a New York collector via Sotheby's auction.

It depicted a last supper scene with the principals being Latin American dictators. Che Guevara was The Christ, Fidel Castro was Judas Iscariot, Evita Peron was The Magdalene, etc.

For 2012, once I resolve the electric and wattage issues associated with having 13 LCD screens all in one circuit, I am going to revisit that theme again, and this time the video (or Powerpoint) component of the drawing will amplify the presence of the dictators.

The original drawing from a few years back focused on Latin American dictators, and this second version will do the same; however, it will be slightly updated historically, as version one had some historic dictators in the piece, such as Haiti's Papa Duvalier, the Perons from Argentina, Fulgencio Batista from Cuba, etc.

The selection process is now open, and once again I plan to have Che Guevara as The Christ (he's a natural for it) and Fidel Castro as The Judas (also a natural for it, since it was Castro who had a hand in Guevara's betrayal in the Highlands of Bolivia).

Who else will make the tableau? Perhaps Hugo Chavez from Venezuela? The issue in "modernizing" the imagery is that Democracy - other than in Cuba and Venezuela - seems to have finally taken root in Latin America, and modern dictators are not as abundant as they once were.

Maybe I'll have to expand the search to include the entire world and add that new weird little fat guy from North Korea, and behind the scenes' dictators like Russia's Putin.

Any ideas?