Maud Sulter: Syrcas

Arguably the artist’s most intricate and layered body of work, Syrcas aims to revive the forgotten history of the genocide of black Europeans during the Holocaust through the technique of photomontage. Sulter juxtaposes canonical imagery from classical European art history with African art objects, overlaid on vintage postcards of picturesque, unspecified Alpine landscapes. As multi-layered collage works, the photomontages’ visual tropes are intimately tied up with Nazi ideology and questions of racial purity as well as African presences in Europe, while the raw montage of the various visual elements serves as reference to children’s scrapbooks.

The composite works of Syrcas are supported by a reproduction of Sulter’s seminal poem Blood Money: written in 1994 and inspired by German photographer August Sanders’ Circus Workers (1926-1932), Blood Money represents a harrowing tale of a young African woman and her family caught up in war, dealing with the constant threat of discrimination, violence and persecution. Two large-scale exhibition prints of the same series will also be part of the show.

'I felt that the piece should resemble something more like a diary. I’d been to see Anne Frank’s house and liked the diary, but I wanted something more direct, more visual, and, ultimately, more personal. Then I remembered sticking pictures into a scrap-book as a child, and I saw that this was the perfect way of juxtaposing images to present the historical problems surrounding the presence of black people in Germany.' - Maud Sulter

This exhibition forms part of an ongoing series of engagements to preserve the late artist’s legacy.