Jumana Manna
Blue Elbow (Coude Bleu)
Blue Elbow (Coude bleu) is made from plaster, burlap, lacquer, pigments and plastics. The materials are related to the techniques of the sculpture or the painting but also others, which refer to commerce, to objects of consumption. The chair refers directly to the body as does the title of the work, Blue Elbow. The amphora itself becomes organic and opposes the rigidity of the chair. The chair becomes elbow and the evocation of the blue brings back to the body, to a wound, to an injury. She calls the vases of this series “Muscle Vases”. The work is part of the Menace of the Origins project which began at the Sculpture Center in New York in 2014. The project highlights the potential violence of archaeological excavations and the instrumentalization of remains. Manna often refers to a predominantly masculine and western violence that comes from the experience of the power here represented by penetration. For Manna, sculptures are a privileged space for exploring materiality, the physical relation that the body has with objects, space, and materials; she states: “I am interested in the way objects are vehicles or agents like our bodies are ships of subjectivity”.