Le miracle du bras blanc (pratiques Cimarronas)
Ivonne González Núñez (Cuba)
Attributes:
Dimensions: 841 x 1189 mm
Price: 1'800.-CHF
Medium: Fine Art print on paper, framed, edition of 5 + 2 AP
Framing: framed
Description:
The Caribbean is a place of encounters and transformations. None of the peoples living there today are indigenous to it in the strict sense. The history of the region is marked by forced displacements, the processes of colonisation, of resistance, and of métissage. From these intersecting trajectories emerge complex identities, formed from fragments of Africa, Europe, Indigenous America, and Asia. This reality, often described as “creolisation,” runs through the works of Kingsley and González Núñez. But these histories do not all benefit from the same visibility. Certain presences have been suppressed or forced into silence, such as the African heritage of the Caribbean. The artists brought together here work within this tension between visibility and erasure.
Ivonne González Núñez approaches these questions through writing, photography, and performance. Her practice often draws from intimate experience so as to speak to collective realities. She stages everyday situations, at times seemingly banal, which nevertheless reveal deeply rooted forms of racism.
One dimension of her practice involves revisiting historical images. By appropriating certain representations drawn from European art history, she reveals their underlying violence. What once appeared natural or neutral suddenly becomes disturbing. By reversing roles or shifting points of view, she opens a critical space: what do we truly see? And what have we learned not to see? González Núñez was deeply marked by a work she encountered at the Museo del Prado after arriving in Europe in the 1990s: The Miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian (c. 1510), painted by Fernando del Rincón. The painting depicts the story of the first successful transplant, made possible through the desecration of the body of a non-consenting Ethiopian man. González Núñez transposes “the miracle of the black leg” into “the miracle of the white arm,” and suddenly the reversal becomes absurd, unthinkable and violent. Through this gesture, the artist, whose anti-racist engagement extends across both her professional and personal life, draws attention to a medical act that passes largely unnoticed at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, yet constitutes yet another violence against a Black body.
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