Double-Take: Officer/Leader of the Chasseurs/Syrian Revolution Commanding a Charge
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 2014, UK, HD, 11'
This sound piece, illustrated by a series of photographs, tells the story of a painting commissioned by a wealthy businessman from Syria for his British country house. The painting, a copy of Théodore Géricault’s Officer of the Chasseurs Commanding a Charge (1812) replaces the French colonial overlord of the original with a Syrian resistance leader who fought the French. Abu Hamdan provokes a mediation on the way colonial violence is represented, celebrated, embodied and appropriated.
