Mindy Belloff
New York, NY
www.IntimaPress.com
The Tragedy of Othello / The Tragedy of Desdemona
2023
Letterpress printed Miniature books, dos-a-dos binding with letterpress printed covers, and Suminagashi marbled edges; LCD screen Video Card cinematic video (8:44 minutes) and printed accordion booklet of video credits, inside a unique custom box with 2 pull-out drawers, wrapped in book cloth
Box 6-1/2 x 4 x 2-3/4, Book 3-1/2 h x 2-3/4 w x 1-3/4 d
Artist Statement
This new edition from Intima Press, four years in the making, is a double-bound miniature pairing of a classic 17th-century Shakespearean play, “The Tragedy of Othello, “with commentary and quoted statistics compiled by the artist in “The Tragedy of Desdemona.” By magnifying the plight of abused women and engaging in dialogue with the text of “Othello” as cultural critique, the “Desdemona” tragedy highlights issues of patriarchy and gender bias throughout centuries, while giving voice to women who have been silenced.
William Shakespeare’s “Othello,” based on a 16th-century tale in Giraldi Cinthio’s “Gli Hecatommithi,” was a popular play in Elizabethan England, which still resonates today. The story begins with devotional love, an elopement, and hope for the future, interrupted by the machinations of the villain Iago, and ends in tragedy within a few days. The character of Othello, a General in the military who marries the young Lady Desdemona, becomes intensely jealous, and eventually murders her, parallels a modern Othello in the sports and television personality O.J. Simpson, who was accused of the double murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994. Both are tragic stories of jealous rage, domestic violence, male dominance, upper class privilege, and femicide. In “The Tragedy of Desdemona,” closing arguments of the legal case and diary entries of the victim are revisited, along with historic and contemporary poetry, writings from the 4th-century Nag Hammadi codices, excerpts of writings from Ovid, Dostoevsky, and Alice Walker, current news headlines, global statistics on femicide, the 2021 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe, the 1993 case of Lorena Bobbitt, and the myth of Medusa, among other texts.
The two volumes are paired, “Othello” on one side, “Desdemona” on the other, sharing the same spine — a parallel with Iago’s description of marital conjugation of the beast with two backs — as the texts and various voices conjoined in dialogue are inseparable. The layered narrative continues with a video card (8:44 minutes). When opened, one views a montage of images, including short clips from film and theater productions of “Othello” (Orson Welles, Laurence Fishburne, Anthony Hopkins, and others), news headlines of sensational stories from the mid-1990’s, recent women’s marches around the #MeToo movement and Supreme Court rulings, and other relevant concerns and global statistics. The video also functions as a time capsule of a generation coming of age in the 1970’s-90’s. The two books and video are in dialog with one another and with the reader/viewer, addressing historic dichotomies, and dark, poignant social issues. The multi-layered narratives present a Pandora’s box of paradoxes, curiosity, wonder, and horrors.