Martin Desilets. All the Disasters of War

About

“During the summer of 2022, I gained access to the storage rooms of the Goya Museum in Castres, France. With my 400-megapixel camera, I photographed each of the eighty engravings that make up Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War, which I then superimposed to form an ensemble, or image. I printed the result in very large format, ten times the size of the original works, in order to provoke a physical encounter with the viewer similar to that imposed by Goya’s Black Paintings series—but here without iconography and without images, or rather, with all the images and all of Goya’s ghosts.

Superimposing The Disasters of War is a project that has haunted me for years. I was waiting for a rare alignment of the planets and the arrival on the market of a sufficiently powerful camera. If the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is not at the origin of this project, this situation has nevertheless exacerbated in me a sense of urgency and necessity. At this very moment, in the real world, the disasters of war continue to pile up, sadly reminding us how disturbingly contemporary Goya’s work remains. All the Disasters of War shows perhaps what we do not see, or what we do not want to see.

All the Disasters of War is the first of a series of large-scale works based on Francisco Goya. Lodged between “too much” and disappearance, this work is a continuation of my recent and current research, in particular Matière noire [Dark Matter], which has occupied most of my time for several years now.” (MD)