First there is the body language, then the story.
I was a young woman when I painted Dead Man in 1988
with his Christ-like posture.
I was an anxious mother with a teenage daughter when I painted
his ‘partner’ Dead Girl in 2002, using painting as a prayer for protection.
Only much later I read about the connection of these two young hijackers
with Palestine and the German Autumn of 1977.
Two of a kind. First published as Contra o Muro. Marlene Dumas 2010 (cat.), Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, 2010, p.59; and included in Marlene Dumas, Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, second edition (revised and expanded) Koenig Books London, 2014.