Elephant in the room

"HYENE's brilliant response to an ambivalent invitation to create a performance in front of a highly regressive, sexist, orientalist mural of a black woman. A ‘historic’ painting in a major Paris municipal building. With poetry and text by Melvyn Pharaon. In a year that saw the French far Right RN leap forward, barely contained by a fragile leftist coalition and Elon Musk endorsing the AfD, this work stands out. This performance literally blowing that s*%t up with a giant elephant that subsumed the offensive image without ever erasing the fetid air of exoticism, how can we escape fetishism in an art world built upon the fetish? It is as if we are asked to be grateful for our objectification.The Elephant refuses the repeated objectification, so often doled out in bitter portions- by an attention economy where we are resented for holding attention, even when that attention is one where we are caught in a vicious cycle of abuse."Senam Okudzeto