Curfew (Likoni March 27 2020)
Michael Armitage
Kenyan British, born 1984
2022
A large oil painting on Lubugo bark cloth in which Michael Armitage stages a tense public moment—titled Curfew (Likoni March 27 2020)—to wrestle with social unrest, bodily vulnerability, and memory through vivid, theatrical imagery.
You are first arrested by looping scarlet ribbons that slash across a panoramic scene of crowded, contorted figures, bold color blocks, and the rough, fibrous bark-cloth surface that makes the tableau feel urgent, ritualistic, and slightly unreal.
By using Lubugo bark cloth alongside modern European painterly strategies, Armitage opens a conversation between East African materials and the global history of painting, insisting that contemporary political life and localized histories belong at the center of the modernist canon.
Medium
Oil on Lubugo bark cloth
Dimensions
8' 2 1/2" x 11' 5 7/8" (250 x 350 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Ronnie Heyman in honor of Ann Temkin
Accession
768.2022
Palette
Exhibitions
