Brave New World II

Theo Eshetu's vision of a brave new world, images of New York's Statue of Liberty flow seamlessly into scenes from Ethiopia's timkat (Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of Epiphany in January), an excerpt from an Italian commercial for an insurance company in which a man crumbles under the pressure of an enormous thumb, and dreamlike footage of dancers in Bali. Shot with grainy and atmospheric Super 8 film, these seemingly unconnected images flicker one after another with the surreal quality of dreams and memories. They reveal the experiences and visual repertoire of this well-traveled artist--who was born in London to Dutch and Ethiopian parents, raised in Senegal and other countries, and now resides in Rome--and draw in every viewer who pauses before its gilded frame. Each viewer is implicated in Eshetu's kaleidoscope of images as the artist presents his work in a mirror box so perfectly calibrated that the film and its reflections take on the form of a globe surrounded by seemingly infinite reflections of the viewer caught in the act of looking. We all become part of the experience.

Eshetu based the title of this work on Aldous Huxley's famous 1932 novel of the same name in which new technologies change society. For Eshetu, this becomes a challenge to explore how technological arts can evoke nontechnological events and experiences. At the same time, his choice of title suggests the changing world in which we live today--one where an American baseball game, Balinese masked dance and an Italian commercial are all part of the lived experience of an African artist.











Theo Eshetu
b. 1958, England
Brave New World II
1999 (2006 edition)
Multimedia and video installation
Museum purchase, 2008-7-1