Voracious Embrace

Léna Bui

Voracious embrace I, II

"the textures and tensions of that complicated moment between life and death"

charcoal, ink, watercolour on paper

Wellcome Collection

Kafukufuku

Kafukufuku Man and Kafukufuku Woman

Elson Kambalu

Malawi

about stories of blood being extracted for sale

plywood boards, reeds, soil mixed in glue

Wellcome Collection

Children Graffiti

Malawi schoolchildren

with Elson Kambalu

soil and maze flour mixed in glue, acrylics, felt pen, pastel

Wellcome Collection

Earth Paintings

Tales of Health

Elson Kambalu

with women of Malawi

soil and maze flour mixed with glue, acrylics, felt pen

Wellcome Collection

Dance Macabre

Dance of Death unites all, while we dance along with the dead to the grave.

Dance Macabre

Wellcome Collection

Saint Saens

Eros and Thanatos

People's strange attraction to things at the outer limits of life and death, sexuality and pain:

the eternal conflict at the centre of human civilisation:

the instincts toward life (Eros) and toward destruction (Thanatos).

Freud

Wellcome Collection

Balint Zsako

Nightingale

"A nightingale, the nearest one of a band which day and night offered themselves up in song around their well-stocked nests, drowned all the other voices, and Michel began to follow the pattern of the arabesque he was singing, waiting for the return of the long identical notes, each one reinforcing the other. He noted the "tz-tz-tz", which he compared to the sound of rings slipping down over a copper rod, the "coti-coti-coti" repeated as many as twenty times without a rest or a pause for breath... The waxing moon filled the long uncurtained window with powdery blue light, while the pink glow from the lamp reached the nearest stars on the syrings... In the silent countryside the loud-voiced nightingale was embarking once more on his night of trills, full fluted notes, variations of infinite range and isolated sounds which imitated the fallen pearl of some amorous toad." 

Colette: Duo

Balint Zsako

Stravinsky: Nightingale