Infantry with beast is a composite installation, initially shown as two separate works. Infantry (2008-10) consists of 27 dog-headed human-like figures, diminutively sized yet fearsome, that form a mottled grey phalanx marching with placid menace along a parade carpet of military red. (Infantry was first shown, without the carpet, inside a disused military site in South Africa.) The formation advances toward beast (2003), an even more diminutive creature, as its lower-case initial letter suggests. While beast crouches expectantly, all heads in Infantry gaze blankly upward and to the right, as if the marchers are awaiting orders from an unseen commander who—given the direction of their gazes—might be imagined standing in the very place occupied by viewers of this work.
Infantry with beast, 2012
Jane Alexander
Artworkers Retirement Society. ©Jane Alexander and DALRO. Photo by Mario Todeschini
Jane Alexander came to prominence in 1991 with Butcher Boys, an iconic response to apartheid in South Africa. In a sweeping essay on Alexander’s work, written in 2013 just at the time that Infantry with beast was first exhibited in its present arrangement, art historian and writer Kobena Mercer used the perceptive term “humanimals” to underscore the uniquely unsettling qualities of Alexander’s creations, which act simultaneously to captivate and confound: “the feelings aroused by the humanimal are always mixed feelings… . To be disturbed by what we perceive ‘out there’ … is one thing: to be simultaneously affected ‘in here’ by a creeping sense of doubt about one’s own state of mind is quite another.”
Infantry with beast will be the final art installation shown in this space long known as Regenstein Hall and dedicated to temporary exhibitions. Following the close of the installation, we will begin transforming the space into the new Grainger Center for Conservation and Science. Regenstein Hall will move to the first floor of the Morton Wing adjacent to the spiral staircase and open with Bruce Goff: Material Worlds.
Jane Alexander: Infantry with beast is organized by Matthew Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator, Photography and Media, and vice president for strategic art initiatives.
Installation Photos
