Mullah

1980

GILBERT AND GEORGE, 1943 and 1942

Mullah is one of 113 pictures created by Gilbert & George in 1980, a year in which the two British artists began to address contemporary human fears in multiple ways.

IN DETAILS

Dimensions

242 x 202 cm

Technique

Gelatin silver print, in sixteen parts

Description

A phantasmal mullah appears among the boards and knots of the wood, with eyes, nose and mouth. The feeling of being watched in one’s own domestic intimacy is combined with the fear of an enemy who could be lurking anywhere. These were years in which Islamophobia began to spread in the Wester world; meanwhile, in 1980, war broke out between Iraq and Iran.

In this context, Gilbert & George put together cycles of works in an attempt to speak to “people today” and “not exclusively to the connoisseur”. Another statement that helps to define their purpose is the following: “We felt that the style of the Western world, the structure of its life, was really under threat”. (words first by Gilbert and then by George in Carter Ratcliff, Gilbert & George. The Fabric of Their World, in Gilbert & George. The Complete Pictures 1971-1985, 1986, pp. XXVII-XXIX).

The image can therefore no longer purely reflect reality, as the artists sometimes set out to do in those same years, but could suddenly deviate from this path and reproduce a fear, a suspicion or an indecipherable fragment.