David Krippendorff

SILENCED WITH GOLD, 2018-2021

gold leaf on score page, 31 x 23 cm 

In SILENCED WITH GOLD, Krippendorff takes Islamic patterns found in Cairo and applies them with gold leaf to pages of Verdi’s Aida score, as if the real “location” were superimposed on the fictional, “orientalized” narrative of the opera.

SILENCED WITH GOLD N. 1, 2019
SILENCED WITH GOLD N. 2, 2019
SILENCED WITH GOLD N. 4, 2021
SILENCED WITH GOLD N. 6, 2021

A selection of sentences from the Aida libretto in Arabic translation are also placed on the same page from which they were taken. “Our country dies because of you” or “Death to the foreigner!” are direct quotations from the opera that suddenly take on a new and contemporary meaning. The works on paper thus attempt to merge two cultures, with the Aida material on the one hand a typical product of its historical time imbued with colonial politics and the West’s fascination with the Orient, and, on the other, the gold additions standing for the local reality.

TRAITOR!, 2018
DEATH TO THE FOREIGNER, 2018
TRAITOR!, 2018
MY COUNTRY DIES BECAUSE OF YOU!, 2018