In 2014, the artist duo Mwangi Hutter made the three-channel film Turquoise Realm, in which they also perform. Initially, they are framed in separate projections, the woman on the left and the man on the right, each lying naked and alone on their bed. The woman then appears in the man’s space, lifting him onto her lap and subsequently carrying him out of the frame as though towards the central ‘room’. We next see them lying together on the bed in the central projection, before they merge and are replaced by (are perhaps transformed into) a mound of fruit and flowers. In the final seconds, we glimpse them lying down again in the spaces opposite those in which they began, but the fruit and flowers remain.

The intimacy of the film’s two subjects—the reciprocity which overcomes the divide between ‘self’ and ‘other’—becomes an offering of intimacy to the viewer as well. We are invited not just to look at the work but participate in it—to imagine our own offering, whether inspired by the initiating strength of the woman or by the trusting reliance of the man. In meditating on the work, we may come to know—and give—ourselves better.

Such self-offering can be conceived as a sort of piety. It is a piety that in this film issues in what might be read as blessing: it ‘flowers’, and the bed in the central projection becomes like a banquet. ‘Wisdom … has set her table’ (Proverbs 9:1–2).

The work evokes piety in another way also. Its tripartite structure recalls the tradition of constructing Christian altarpieces in the form of three (usually painted) panels.

Traditionally, the central panel is the focal point to which the flanking panels are subordinate. Turquoise Realm, it may be argued, is no different. The centre is the site of a consummation. It is preceded by Mwangi’s pause as she holds Hutter in the position of a Pietà, and by an intensification of sunlight which seems to drench their bodies.

On the Christian altars above which triptychs stand, both sacrifice (Christ’s offered body) and glory (Christ’s transfigured, resurrection body) are recalled and made present, and the bodies of participants in turn are invited to share in both Christ’s sacrifice and his glory.

In Turquoise Realm, comparably, Mwangi Hutter’s offered bodies become transfigured bodies, in an event of communion which issues in a feast.

References

Brown, Will A. 2014. ‘Mwangi Hutter Interview: “We are interested in Personal and Universal Responsibility”’, www.studiointernational.com