Raising a Revolutionary – Raphael Vella
‘Raising a Revolutionary’ is a series of large drawings on book-pages that was shown at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2014-15. The book-pages that form the support for each drawing were extracted from a well-known text for parents about baby care and the raising of children. The printed text on each sheet is partially obliterated by portraits in graphite, which show various revolutionary figures or anarchists like Thoreau, Marx, Luxembourg, Kropotkin and Bakunin. The portraits are accompanied by the title of a work by the depicted individual and are created by meticulously deleting lines of texts on the book-pages. The works reflect upon education and upbringing, the relationship between childhood and adulthood and also upon artistic revolutions. How does one raise a revolutionary? And how much does the establishment of the ‘new’ depend on the eradication of the ‘old’?
• Touring Members: 1
• Number of Works: 12
• Genre: Contemporary Drawing
• Minimum Exhibition Size: 18m
Project Websites: www.raphaelvella.com
Contact: raphael.vella@um.edu.mt