The Child in Blood
The Child in Blood
Date
2024
Edition Size
unique
Media
Colored Pencil, Ink, Marker pen
Binding
Accordion
Dimensions
9.5 × 7 in
Location
Madrid, Spain
Collection
Collection Development, Unique Books$ 1,800.00
1 in stock
The Child in Blood
What’s it like to be a child swallowed by a wolf?
The fairy tales we’re told as children live in us as a kind of truth. Our imagination is shaped by how the story is told. When we prioritise the crisp telling of omniscience, we risk glossing over the individual’s experience of violence. How do we treat victims of brutality who’ve lived to tell their stories, who come to seek shelter?
The Child in Blood also touches on the complex moral decisions a victim is sometimes faced with and the consequence’s of telling the truth about unimaginable violence. In this retelling of the story, the world Little Red Riding Hood encounters is horrified by her bloody appearance more than by the violence she has endured. The final words of the book “I’m here, too” are an expression of survival and empathy. We are alive.
Text reads: “In the beginning was the emerging. An animal cut open and someone stepping out in a veil of blood. That is what they talked about. Someone in a cape of blood. A child. “Of course it ran away,” they said. “So cunning,” they said. A child kept in chains, fed small cakes like a dog, treats for obedience. “I was twelve when I met the wolf.” A child with the name of a flower. “So sweet,” they said. “And bristly,” I said. We live in a world where people eat people. I’ve seen it happen. Where grandparents wait to welcome you into the hall of blood. Let me out. I scratched my way through flesh, ripping at the underskin with thorns. They say a man was waiting with a rifle smiling, so the child got hold of it and shot the man. That’s when the stories about me began. Tales of the child in blood. “Not all is true.” “Look at me.” “I’m here.” “I’m here, too.””
“Why the concertina book? Inspired by Leporello, Don Giovanni’s manservant but also another name for the concertina book, I want my books to be both chronicle and witness, a direct gaze at how we’re sometimes complicit in and helpless to stop the actions of our peers and political leaders. The concertina book is an attempt to grasp the singular voice within the bigger picture, to mirror realities that are simultaneously unfolding and panoramic. The concertina book is both an attention to the details and an attempt to portray the whole story.”