From next Thursday until 18 September, Casa Árabe’s Column Room will be showing the exhibition La luz cegadora (The Blinding Light), by Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi. The exhibition is part of PhotoEspaña 2022.
This exhibition is an artistic and exhibition project made up of works by the Moroccan artist (Tangiers, 1970), whose various pieces were inspired by a miraculous scene painted by Fra Angelico: The Altarpiece of Saint Mark (1440). Its predella shows the miracles performed by two saints, Cosmas and Damian. Patrons of surgeons and pharmacists, these twin brothers were supposedly born in Syria and converted to Christianity in their youth.
The miracle chosen by Mounir Fatmi is The Healing of Deacon Justinian. In this scene, the Arab brothers perform the miracle of the deacon’s healing by grafting on the leg of a recently deceased Ethiopian man. This scene evokes the mixing of a white body with a black limb, but also of the living with the dead, thus questioning notions of race, hybridity and identity.
