Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - The Visitors (Shingles Paintings)

Preview image of work. watercolor on Awagami Hakuho paper, The Visitors (Shingles Paintings) 38757

2020.8.3

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The Visitors (Shingles Paintings)

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Artist

Andrea Dezsö (Satu-Mare, Romania, 1968 - )

Title

The Visitors (Shingles Paintings)

Creation Date

2019

Century

early 21st century

Dimensions

20 1/2 x 17 in. (52.07 x 43.18 cm)

Object Type

watercolor

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

watercolor on Awagami Hakuho paper

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Greenacres Acquisition Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2020.8.3

Created during Dezsö’s tenure as the halley k harrisburg ’90 and Michael Rosenfeld Artist-in-Residence at Bowdoin College, The Visitors and Neuron People grew out of the artist’s bout with shingles. Through these paintings, Dezsö personified the virus as surreal figures, evoking terrifying and painful sensation of grappling with unexpected “visitors” in the form of a virus that had long laid dormant within her body. The works’ metaphorical implications of this struggle to overcome “demons” hidden within the body—or the body politic—took on new implications soon after the series’ completion, as COVID-19 swept the globe. The virus has not only created an unprecedented need for addressing public health but has also forced the nation—and the world—to acknowledge the long overlooked but deeply-seeded ills of systemic oppression, demanding we confront the contagion in order to heal it.