Monteiro's "untitled #9" (2014) is one of 13 images on display at the Chazen Museum of Art.
The figure appears against a darkening sky, her face masked with kabuki-style white makeup, her black gown and cowl made of endless strips of magnetic recording tape. She strides across a massive trash heap of computer keyboards, monitors and other electronic discards, holding a long-handled torch, the flames consuming a tightly wound cluster of electrical cords.
It’s a haunting image that stops viewers in their tracks, even before they learn the trash heap in the photo actually exists in Senegal. The torch represents the health dangers area children face when they attempt to burn the plastic off discarded wires to make a few cents selling the scrap copper found within.
It’s one of 13 similar images that make up The Prophecy, a small but powerful photo series by artist Fabrice Monteiro, on display at the UW Chazen Museum of Art through Jan. 5. For Monteiro, an industrial designer and former fashion model who wanted to experience life on the other side of the lens, the exhibit is meant to inspire people to unite and fight the planet’s shocking clutter and dangerous decline.
“A lot of people think the photos represent our dystopian future, but we’re living in this trash right here and now,” says Monteiro, reached by telephone at his home in Dakar, Senegal. “When I came back to Africa after 20 years abroad I realized just how badly globalization and pollution had infected the lives of the people. I created a bridge between art and environmental facts that used an African way of telling stories.”
The Belgian-Beninese photographer, who says his years of working in fashion have informed his work, knew landscape photos would be insufficient. The models in each of the photos represent the djinn, a race of spirits, neither good nor bad, sent to Earth to bear witness to humankind’s destruction. The faces of many are covered in the black plastic bags that literally litter the African continent, and all are mired in the detritus that characterizes the environment.
One djinn emerges mermaid-like from the sea covered in an oil slick, a dead seabird in hand, while a boat appears to capsize in the background. Another djinn scuttles down a beach surrounded by the bones and offal of animal slaughter with six large “legs” of bound cables emerging crab-like from her back. Other images — shot in Senegal, Nigeria, Colombia and Australia — tackle the dangers of deforested plains, shore erosion, a dying reef and other human-made disasters.
The Chazen exhibit photos are the first round of 25 images Monteiro is planning to publish in a book. Despite their often frightening content, Monteiro says he remains optimistic.
“In the past 500 years we created the current modality that is destroying the environment and exploiting groups of people worldwide,” he says. “Diversity is one of humankind’s riches, and this is an opportunity for us to realize our common destinies and cooperate with other cultures.”
