Requiem
June 2022
Performance
Cité international des arts in Paris

In June 2022, Amin presented Requiem for the inauguration of ENTRELACS/INTERLACED at the Cité international des arts in Paris. This was an exhibition, symposium and series of performances in memory of Dominique Malaquais (1964-2021). An art historian and political scientist, Dominique dedicated her life and work to African worlds. Amin, who had known Dominique since they were freshmen at Yale, performed Requiem with Bart Legum, Dominque’s widower. Bare-chested, both wore white shalwar. Anointed in gold leaf, Bart’s head and shoulders were enveloped in a shroud of copper mesh that Amin had made for him. On Amin’s head was a copper helmet with curved, ram-like horns, rectangular eyes and a long, triangular nose. Like so many of Amin’s worn sculptures, these evoked a mythical era of his own making. (For this performance, they corresponded to his installation Elysian Fields for the accompanying show at the Cité’s gallery, where he reimagined the resting place of the heroic and virtuous in Greek mythology as a bed of coal strewn with fragments of Arabic text.) Hidden on an upper terrace of the Cité’s courtyard, Bart began the performance by producing screeching cords from an electric guitar. Amin frantically pushed himself through the assembled crowd below to a plastic sheet spread on the ground where nine plates holding powder of various colors had been placed in a circle. Crouching at their center, Amin slammed his palms to the ground and mournfully cried “Allah!” three times. He then grabbed handfuls of the pigment and tossed them over himself. Bart slowly descended a brief flight of steps, still playing his guitar, and perched on a high stool. Amin crawled towards him, marking the hem of his shalwar. Bart performed a song in both English and French that he had written, a kind of mantra that he sings to himself whenever Dominque’s absence becomes particularly painful. Solemnly, he sang: “Rest with the angels, my wonderful Do/You are an angel, my wonderful Do/You are my love and my light and my life.”