I have long been drawing to images of the aftermaths of disasters and violence and how they are remembered and forgotten. Living in an age of instantaneous and constant over-information, tragic events and their consequences – though at first dramatic and captivating – are another signal reported amongst the white noise in which we are drowning, only to be commemorated yearly, otherwise forgotten. Some events have touched me more than others despite my having no immediate connection to them – this is only natural, we pick and select what to be humbled and frightened by, otherwise we would live in constant fear and crushing sadness – and I have found it important to work with images of their aftermaths as a form of remembrance.
Maybe it’s guilt that drives me to remember, to work with these images, as a counterpoint to the vacuous-ness of the Celebrity series, because these images, these events and tragedies are as viscerally real as celebrity is an abstract construct.
(Hence titles of the drawings below.)
Denis Routhier 