Thursday, December 16, 2010

collecting an image

Francis Alÿs: Fabiola at the National Portrait Gallery, London



oh fabiola, you are a diamond. but with my diamonds i must make them again. it is the remove that intrigues me --


---Mary Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson: who was taken by the Indians at the destruction of Lancaster, in 1676

first there was fabiola.
then, the copy, a painting. over a thousand years after her death. lost, now.
and then, more copies. which duplicate an original that no one has seen or touched.

original: fabiola the human or fabiola the first-painting?

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