How does Antonio Oba transform a tragedy into a playful scene of cinematic vice in his painting Angelus 2022?
(detail -A.Oba,Angelus ,2022 oil on canvas ,private collection)
Quotations abound in Oba’s painting, but he brings something unexpected: the collapse of a fire escape as it is known, Fire on Marlborough Street, a monochrome photograph by Stanley Forman, won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1976 and the title of World Press Photo of the Year.
Stanley Forman ,Fire on Malborough Street,1975, Monochrome Photography .
The photograph, taken with a motorised camera, shows the tragic scene of 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones, who supernaturally survived the fall much thanks to Diana’s body cushioning the toddlers descent, falling from a burning appartment on Marlborough Street in Boston, July 1975.
Originally published in the Boston Herald American and 100 newspapers, which led to the adoption of new fire escape legislation in the USA.
In Oba’s painting, the tragedy suffered by the young woman and the infant is transformed; they almost seem to be falling playfully from the sky into a deep imaginary purple ocean.
Perhaps it is because the images of the mother and child cast a shadow on the sky, as if the sky were a backdrop on a stage set. Oba brings something unexpectedly dreamy or hallucinatory to the scene, adding a quintet of cherubic children hovering around the fire and a kind of pieta.
Narratively, there is much to discover.
Antonio Oba ,Angelus ,2022, on canvas ,Private collection.(NKA Photography,2024)
Antonio Oba lives and works in Brasilia,Brazil.
SOLO EXIBITIONS:
Pina Contemporanea,SaoPaulo,Brazil 2023
Oude Kerk,Amstedam ,2022
X Museum ,Beijing,China 2022
GROUP EXIBITIONS
12th Liverpool Biennal ,Liverpool,UK,2023
Museum de Fundatie,Zwolle,Netherlands,2023
MASP,Sao Paulo ,Sao Paulo,Brazil,2022
Cape town South Africa ,2022
Bourse de Commerce-Painault Collection ,Paris,France 2021
PUBLICATIONS
Antonio Oba ,Diana Campbell,Diane Lima,2023
Published by Circle Books and Cobogo, 116 pages
Centre d’Art Contemporain de Geneve
16 Novembre-16 February 2025
Curator ,Adrea Bellini,
Reported by Nazli kok Akbas
NKA ART REPORTS Switzerland-France-Istanbul
December 2024
