Niki de Saint Phalle, The Engaged Couple of Knokke, 1993, Silkscreen

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Silkscreen, 1993 Handsigned by the artist in pencil Edition : 500 ex. Catalog : [Prestel 43] 100.00 cm. x 70.00 … Read more Silkscreen, 1993 Handsigned by the artist in pencil Edition : 500 ex. Catalog : [Prestel 43] 100.00 cm. x 70.00 cm. 39.37 in. x 27.56 in. (paper) 100.00 cm. x 70.00 cm. 39.37 in. x 27.56 in. (image) This serigraph celebrates a mixed-race couple, united in love despite all opposition. Niki de Saint Phalle expresses an inclusive and joyful vision of union: love as a response to violence, rejection, fear of the other, racism. Through the difference in their bodies, she also emphasizes their equality: two beings who choose each other, free, without submission to social norms. Niki de Saint Phalle became aware of racial discrimination at an early age, observing the inequalities suffered by African-American domestic workers in her household. This experience developed her fight for the marginalized: “A woman in a man's civilization is like a Negro in a white man's civilization”, she wrote as an adult, already linking feminism and anti-racism. In the 1960s, her sculpture Black Rosy testifies to her first stance on this subject, although she lived far removed from the major Afro-American political movements. When she returned to the United States in the 1990s, her work became more focused on the representation of mixed couples. This change coincided with the birth of her mixed-race great-grandson. She then created the Black Heroes series, multiplying her representations of mixed-race couples, and defending a world where diversity is a real asset. In Les Fiancés de Knokke, the artist responds to exclusion with tenderness, to racism with color, to separation with union. A way of affirming that freedom, in its fullest sense, also includes the right to love whoever you want, against all odds. This piece has an attribution mark,
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