Adel Abdessemed


 

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF

They never had a voice of their own. What remains of them has passed through many different treatments: death, taxidermy, fire. Now they are like glued together in a formless mass of burned skins and other materials.

Who's afraid of them anymore? Who's afraid of their once threatening presence, when still alive they shared with us the world we are still living in?

It was 1933 when the song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf was originally featured in the Walt Disney cartoon Three Little Pigs, and Adolf Hitler was democratically elected chancellor of Germany.

It was 1937 when the Basque city of Guernica was bombed by German and Italian warplanes killing more than one fourth of its population, and Picasso did a large mural painting on canvas in memory of this.

It was in 1966 that Barnett Newman painted Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue and the Cold War had reached its acme.