80 sculptures by British-Trinidadian artist Zak Ové. Black and Blue: The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness, a mass of identical two-metre-tall figures
London (2016), Yorkshire (2017), San Francisco (2018), East Winterslow (2019), Los Angeles (2019)
Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness (sometimes titled Black and Blue: The Invisible Men and the Masque of Blackness) was an art installation by Zak Ové that has been installed in several major cities. It features 40 (or sometimes 80) identical statues, each weighing approximately 300 lbs.[1][2]
Ové first installed the work in the courtyard of Somerset House in London, as part of the 2016 edition of the contemporary African art fair 1:54.[3] He intended it as "a rebuke" to Ben Jonson's plays The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty, performed at Somerset House in 1605 and 1608, starring the queen consort Anne of Denmark and other performers in blackface.[4] Ové was inspired by a meter-tall wooden sculpture his father, Horace Ové, obtained in Kenya in the early 1970s, and attempted to create "a work that spoke about Africa's diaspora, what it is to be an African born away from the continent" by replicating and enlarging the figure into a group of massive graphite sculptures, "almost as a tribe out of context."[5]
^Yeomans, Phil (2019-06-18). "Anyone for croquet?"(PDF). The Daily Telegraph. London. p. 10. Bea Fomin takes a closer look at one of 40 graphite figures in an exhibition by Zak Ové, the British-Trinidadian artist, at the New Art Centre in Roche Court, near Salisbury, Wilts. The artwork, Black and Blue: The Invisible Men and the Masque of Blackness, comprises identical 7ft-tall figures standing in the grounds of the 19th century house.
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