Cabbage Moths Lay Their Eggs On My Kale: Steve McQueen's "Ashes"

Sunday, 31 May 2015

Steve McQueen's "Ashes"

Included in the Arsenale portion of Okwui Enwezor's curated exhibition at this year's Venice Biennale was a two screen video installation by Steve McQueen which I think may be the work that stuck most with me during my trip. The video is shown as two back to back screens with overlapping sound. One screen depicts the labouring body of a man intricately preparing a concrete tomb and engraved stone for a another man named Ashes. There is a sense of the body and work that goes into the preparations for burying the dead as well as the craftsmanship and artistry involved to make memorials aesthetic. The sound of this work is particularly striking. We hear the sound of the concrete being spread, chiseling, pealing the plastic stencil to expose the text to be engraved. In this side of the video, while the body of the man working to prepare the dead is present, Ashes's body is absent. Another funeral takes place in the background, emphasizing the work in situ that goes on to prepare a tomb. Death and the labour of burial is cyclical.

The other video, which I viewed second, shows Ashes standing on a boat wearing nothing but a necklace and white swim trunks. He has a young and healthy body and seems to be having fun and playing around. As we hear that voice over of how he was shot several times and consequently died, he falls off the boat but comes back up laughing. In addition to the voice over, you hear the sound of the ocean, but also the sound of the chisel and concrete from the other video, which now seems more aggressive, as if the violence is already being inflicted on his alive and almost polished body.