“I see the world we are living in as both Hell and Purgatory. Our only hope in this life of ours, all that we have left is to try our best to be admitted to heaven someday. The Day After is an installation in which, after walking a long way through a dense and dark forest, one reaches that space where everything seems to be suspended, where one can feel this particular tension that we experience before embarking on a journey of which we don’t really know the name. The place is organized in a materialized circle and inhabited by iron characters which are ready to take off. The circle, in fact a spiral, symbolizes the energy of human beings, who find themselves in a new configuration, and they feel disoriented and experience a feeling of unreality.”
From The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.
Read more about Senegalese sculptor Ndary Lô, see Wikipedia.fr.
“In Frontier With Church, the artist makes direct reference to the procession encountered by Dante and Matilda at the summit of Mount Purgatory, interpreted in the temporal contexts of proselytism, migration, and trade, on their way to paradise. With Matilda—who clearly prepares Dante for his meeting with Beatrice—Dante witnesses a procession which forms an allegory within the allegory, somewhat like Shakespeare’s play with a play, in which the characters are walking symbols rather than real people. Alexander’s tableau is thus intended to represent the earthly paradise, a borderline space between earth and divine sanctuary: a frontier with attendants, messengers, custodians, and cargo. The tension revolves around human figures rendered with extreme realis, concurring in the creation of the moment before Dante’s meeting with the woman who (allegorically) symbolizes the path to God. All the creatures of the tableau are life-sized and share the real space occupied by the Viewer/s. They have a spectral presence within that space which silently enacts a living history.”
