Raising a Revolutionary (Self-control) – Che Guevera

by Raphael Vella

• part of the series ‘Raising a Revolutionary (Self-control)’
• pencil and ink on book pages lifted from Dr Spock’s ‘Baby and Child Care’
• 64cm by 96cm artwork size
• 80cm by 120cm mount size
• 86.5cm by 126cm framed size (light oak wood)
• original piece
• 2014

About this series ‘Raising a Revolutionary (Self-control)’:

How do you educate a revolutionary of the future? A thick manual that teaches good parenting techniques is pulled apart and stuck back in random order to create large sheets of paper. On each sheet, a single book-cover with title and author’s portrait is drawn by crossing out hundreds of printed lines of text with pencil. The title of each book is partially legible, while the drawn portraits are all revolutionaries or prophets of civil disobedience or anarchism like Thoreau, Luxemburg and Kropotkin. One document (an old photographic portrait) erases another (a book that educates the educator), yet both remain visible. Each of these historic ‘fighters’ strikes out this intimate world of maternal contact, feeding, and initial stages of body awareness.

Exhibitions

2017 White Memory– 1989/2018: Art in Malta and Poland , Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta. Curated by
Irene Biolchini and Marinella Paderni

2014-15 Raising a Revolutionary, Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw (solo exhibition)