A REVISIT TO ONE OF OF OUR FAVOURITE FURST_ORI WORKS
The fingerprint is the bureaucratic logo stolen from the identity of each individual; but paradoxically, without a legal identity a human being almost seems to lose existence: a ghost, unable to defend themselves, to own property, or to protect themselves. The possibility of escaping the iron rules of society does not exist; an authentic life is not permitted outside of society. The finger, the fingerprint, our essence, our individuality highlighted by nature becomes a logo, a brand, in the double sense of the word for society, which, without knowing exactly what those lines contain, uses them masterfully to reorder our being that paradoxically we create ourselves by filling out and adapting to pre-printed forms.
Fingerprints and plaster castes of the fingers of four of the great existential heroes of literature: Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky; Joseph K from The Trial by Franz Kafka; Meursault from The Outsider by Albert Camus, and Mattias Pascal from the Late Mattias Pascal by Luigi Pirandello. Guilty or under suspicion, fiction and reality, the absurdity of identity and escape from the self melded together through multiple layers.
This was first shown in the 2016 exhibition Signs of Id on the historic light boat the LV21, moored on the Thames at Gravesend.
