In the Western tradition of self-portraiture, painters embody something of the singularity of their relationship to the world \u2013\nD\u00fcrer beauty, Rembrandt reality, Francis Bacon naked life, Andy Warhol surface \u2013 in a long series of self-stagings. Hassan Musa,\nan artist in the age of critical thought and deconstruction, opts for another way of confronting himself, a blend of intimacy and\ngeopolitics.\nIn his self-portraits, as in all his paintings, on wood, on printed fabrics, or canvas, in ink or oil, he lays bare the images and words of\na vast maelstrom of cultural references, in a kind of intervisuality that he sifts through with his corrosive irony, in a telescoping of\ndisparate elements held together by an offbeat humour. In literature, his assemblages could be considered zeugma, associating\nelements belonging to different semantic registers, or anacoluthon, in discontinuities and anachronisms, or in any case, ellipsis\nand the implicit.\nThat\u2019s it for the diagram, which renews the genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the archangel Gabriel, dressed in a loose tunic, he is a messenger, pointing with a hand gesture that serves as proof to a\nlarge, empty, white drape, his impassive and insistent gaze taking us to witness a presence\/absence and an undeterminable\nplace (\u201chere?\u201d) while \u2013 cut out of a Tiepolo-esque sky, dressed in long, white, frothy robes \u2013 four miniature angels animate the\nspace. With this Autoportrait aux Anges (1987), Musa borrows from traditional representations of angels in European painting,\nwhile connecting the three panels of the triptych of a Hadith, in Arabic calligraphy, attesting to the anteriority of the encounter\nbetween Gabriel and the Prophet: \u201cI was a Prophet while Adam was (still) between water and clay.\u201d Undoubtedly, angels belong\nto everyone. In Ange (2002), naked and athletic, with robust wings and a halo sketched in white paint on a background of\nProven\u00e7al fabric, Musa holds an axe, ready \u2013 like the archangel Michael confronting the dragon of the Apocalypse with his\nlance \u2013 to do battle with the miseries and scandals of the whole world, against a backdrop of a profusion of flowers that partially\ncover the image and curiously flatten it. And we should remember that Musa has long expressed his anger at the current and\npast abjections of the world; \u00aba dangerous place run by criminals.\u00bb\nIn his Autoportrait Avec Id\u00e9es Noires (2003), taking the words of the title literally, he surrounds himself \u2013 this time without\nwings \u2013 with two female figures, each encapsulating, in a different way, the racist violence of a colonialism that invented and\nconsumed African exoticism. One is that of Josephine Baker, the other that of Saartje, alias Sarah Baartman, a young girl from\na South African ethnic group, absurdly described as the \u00abHottentot Venus\u00bb, who ignominiously became the object of \u00abscience\u00bb\nand fairground, here in the absolute nudity of a cast of her body.\nBut it is in a self-portrait multiplied into three angels, one of which has the body of Batman, a reversal, give or take a few letters,\nof the name given to her by her predators, that he surrounds the sanctified Saartje, in the background of a fabric saturated with\nsmall drawings of 19th-century objects, evoking the artifacts of ethnographic museums long unconcerned with ethics, to the\npoint of enriching their collections with looted places of worship and reified bodies (Worship Objects , 2003).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many other subjects of indignation. Repurposing Hokusai\u2019s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Musa created his\nAutoportrait en pirate somalien au large de Kanagawa (2015), against a backdrop of fabrics printed with fighter planes and\nsailing ships. But here the fragile fishing boats threatened by the raging waves in the Japanese woodblock print are occupied\nby Somali pirates, like those who, in the 2000s, undertook to fight against illegal fishing practiced on their coasts by boats from\nSoutheast Asia, Iran or Europe, plundering schools of fish and destroying an essential and fragile source of income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elsewhere, here we are with him stuffed with sweet and colorful pastries, augmented by the portrait of the erotic and no less\nindustrial icon that was Marilyn Monroe (Autoportrait avec la vierge Marilyn , 2020), the latter being additionally placed at the\nfoundations of the history of painting and the art market as evoked in short by the triptych The Food Chain I (triptic) , in 2021.\nIn this work, from left to right, back-to-back and three-quarter view, come Saint Luke \u2013 with the features of Michelangelo \u2013 with\nbrush and palette, inventing without a model not the portrait of the Virgin Mary as in Vasari\u2019s fresco, but that of a sensual Marilyn\nwhom the painter\u2019s hand-rest cane now seems to threaten, then Ren\u00e9 Magritte, in a quote from his self-portrait La Clairvoyance\n(1936), and finally Musa who \u2013 while mimicking Magritte\u2019s gesture painting on Saint Luke\u2019s back \u2013 watches us watch him, and\nlike him not fooled by the potential betrayal of images.\nOne more detail: on the far left of the painting, at the origin of the origin, out of frame, a hand with an outstretched index finger\nindicates the direction of the gaze and, in the same gesture, holds the painted panels, creating an image within the image.\nThe whole is punctuated by superimposed motifs \u2013 images within the image within the image, multiplying the planes with\nan effect of depth that is the hallmark of Musa\u2019s works \u2013 toucan, tiger, cheetah, and tropical fish; all endangered animals\naccompanied by luminous, flowery medallions of a Virgin in glory in her mandorla\/vulva. Very close to Musa\u2019s face is a butterfly\nof the genus Yponomeuta , fragile but capable of using its wings like a drum to ward off predators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes, this great series of borrowings and diversions that feed the images to invent themselves, generate curious\nassociations as with Crush (Frida) , in 2022. In a striking shortcut, the accident that broke the body of the Mexican artist, whom\nthe great American pop art market has made an icon of its own history, is here evoked by collages of onomatopoeia from comics\n(\u201cCrush!\u201d, \u201cBlaf!\u201d, \u201cHa Ha Ha \u201d...). We think of Roy Lichtenstein\u2019s Whaam! (1963), an ironic adaptation of a Men of War page, an\nanthology of war images in comics, and by association of ideas to the history of conflictual relations between the United States\nand Mexico, in a long series of annexations and border wars. But here, Musa\u2019s self-portrait sits alongside the inverted, luminous\none of an irresistible Frida Kahlo, provoking another kind of crush, this time colored with fascination, attraction and desire.\nAlthough his artistic approach is a great device of protest, Musa also makes it a space for play; his titles \u2013 most often painted on\nthe works themselves and forming part of the composition \u2013 bear witness to this, and it is in the form of a \u201cjoke\u201d (Autoportrait\nen impressionnant , 2022) that he expresses his admiration for the impressionist painters who have accompanied him a lot in his\nwork in recent years.\nNonsense, for which the high potential for elucidating complexity is otherwise well-known, is invoked in The Queen & I (2021),\nfor an improbable dialogue between Musa (I) and Queen Elizabeth (Q), with tiny twirling effigies of a turbaned Superman,\na portrait of Che Guevara, chili peppers, tomatoes, and figs \u2013 some open and pink \u2013 superimposed on the two portraits,\nas is a jubilant text in Gothic letters painted in red:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q: Hassan, now that Philip has passed away, I think we can get married.\nI: Elizabeth, you know that I cannot marry you. I am already married to Patricia.\nQ: Hassan, you are Muslim, you can marry four wives!\nI: Elisabeth, try to understand my position, I am a moderate Muslim!\nQ: Well, nobody\u2019s perfect<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact that there is so little narcissism on Hassan Musa\u2019s self-portraits says a lot about him: an artist born in Sudan, trained\nin art in Khartoum, holding a doctorate in art history in France, where he lives. He is a drawer, painter, calligrapher, engraver,\nillustrator, performer, seamster, \u00abtinkerer\u00bb and \u00abimage maker,\u00bb a lover of fabrics and colors, an art critic, a great reader and\na keen observer, a transformer of an inexhaustible cultural repertoire without borders.\nFor his Autoportrait aux id\u00e9es de couleurs (2003), he appears naked on a patchwork of fabrics printed with flowers, strawberries,\ngrapes, and birds, idyllic evocations contradicted, in the background, by the disturbing drips of a gigantic explosion. Everything\ngoes together: heaven and hell, the life drive and the death drive, tolerance and violence. What is to be done?\nAgainst all that confuses us, traps us, and threatens us, Musa\u2019s self-portraits suggest possible common spaces of resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Evelyne Toussaint\n\nContemporary Art Historian\nProfessor Emeritus at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaur\u00e8s<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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