Beatrice

Pélagie Gbaguidi, Sacrifice (2013)

April 28, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“Sacrifice—it appears twice in the usual sense of ‘solemn offer of victims and gifts’ made to godheads. In a broader sense, it refers to any offer, real or symbolic, material or spiritual, made to God: ‘Even as thine own Angels of their will/ Make sacrifice to thee, Hosanna singing, /So many all men make the sacrifice of theirs’ (Purgatorio, Canto XI, 11). In particular, the vow is described as a sacrifice, insofar as its formulation obliges the man, standing before the divinity, to perform or not perform a given action, thus offering to God one’s own freedom of choice. It is Beatrice who clarifies to Dante what the importance of the vow is, as a spontaneous sacrifice and offering to God: ‘closing between God and man the compact, /A sacrifice is of this treasure made’ (Paradiso, Canto V, 29).”

Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

For more information on Pélagie Gbaguidi, see Wikipedia. For more on the artist’s body of work, see AWARE, the Archive of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions.

Berenice Josephine Bickle, film stills (2013)

April 22, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“For the artist, the Divine Comedy represents a ‘theological’ allegory, where the literal level becomes a ‘beautiful lie’ conceived in order to convey a hidden truth. The historical characters that appear in Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso are realistically determined and they provide a figural interpretation of history. From this starting point, the artist feels justified in introducing the viewer to her own reading of the Divine Comedy, in which she investigates histories mirroring Dante’s Inferno from the perspective of contemporary Africa. The work is composed of two opposite video screens, splitting the audience’s point of view between them, as the perception of two narratives occurs simultaneously. The central focus is a looped conversation between Beatrice and Virgil, where the feminine and masculine voices are superimposed by Dante’s presence, a poetical presence that weaves the two narratives together. While Beatrice’s character is dressed in Maputo clothes, surrounded by curious artifacts that together combine to make a coloured plot based on the dynamics of presence/absence and life/death, Virgil becomes a guide to one of the cities of Zimbabwe. No longer a storyteller of the epic on Trojan Wars, the Virgil constructed by the artist narrates the wars of colonial and postcolonial Africa, where the archival footage of Zimbabwe’s liberation war becomes the base for the narrative.”

From The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

For more on the Zimbabwean artist Berry Bickle, see Wikipedia.

Maurice Pefura, The Silent Way (2013)

April 21, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“The spectator is invited to enter, to move through this bright, white virginal structure and to slowly discover that on the surface of the sheets, printed in white on white, there are lines taken from the Cantos that make up Dante’s Paradiso. The ensemble of the elements is illuminated by a soft, pure light that serves as a guide: the transformation that the artist wishes to bring about does not focus on the path followed by Dante, but rather on the perennial and memorable presence of Beatrice, who according to the artist embodies the very sense of Dante’s Paradiso. The installation thus becomes a path on which the onlooker is enshrouded in words and light. A place where—just like in the Comedy itself—it is still possible to enter and be illuminated by the candour and potency of the very essence of love.”

From The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

See also the images in Griot magazine, which describes the piece as it was presented in Njami’s I is An Other / Be the Other exhibit at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAM) in Rome: “Maurice Prefura’s The Silent Way stages La Divina Commedia, a sort of labyrinth made of white floating empty pages that form its walls and hold visitors prisoners. Crossing this labyrinth, however, one realizes that there are visible inscriptions on the pages which can only be seen from certain angles, ‘as if in a rite of initiation.’ Once out of the labyrinth, one meets Beatrice.” –Johanne Affricot, “Contemporary Art and Africa in Rome,” Griot (March 20, 2018)

Jane Alexander, Frontier With Church (2012-2014)

April 20, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“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.”

From The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

For more on the South African artist, see Wikipedia.

“Riflessioni semiserie da dantedì ovvero la lezione di Beatrice”, Antonella Valoroso (2021)

April 11, 2022 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

“Mentre tramonta il sole sul dantedì2021, in quella che per Dante è ‘’l’ora che volge il disìo’, mi viene in mente che, nonostante il mio ininterrotto amore per il divino poeta, non ho mai provato a pensare a Dante in una prospettiva femminista. Ed ecco che TRE riflessioni si accavallano e si intrecciano l’una all’altra, proprio come i versi delle terzine della Commedia.

“Riflessione numero uno, ispirata dalle illustrazioni dell’Inferno di Gustave Doré. Riflessione numero due, ispirata dal dipinto ‘Francesca di Rimini nell’inferno dantesco’ di Nicola Monti, recentemente acquisito dalla Galleria degli Uffizi. Riflessione numero tre, ispirata dai versi 7-12 del XVII canto del Paradiso.

“Buon dantedì (e e ogni altro giorno) a tutte le donne e a tutti gli uomini che non hanno paura di dare voce propri pensieri e al proprio disìo!” [. . .] –Antonella Valoroso, Corriere, March 27, 2021 (retrieved April 11, 2022)

To read Valoroso’s full reflections, visit the full article here.

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