Till Death Us Do Part

Till Death Us Do Part is a 20-monitor video-wall installation, originally comprised of seven individual yet connected video works. Five of them are still included in the work today. As part of a global Avant-garde of video artists in the 1980s, Theo Eshetu contributed to the search for new forms of display able to challenge the mono-narrative, chronology, and linearity of the single TV by his pioneering arrangement of the work in the form of a video-wall. The negotiation of form is further reflected in the investigation of the then still unfixed language of video as an artistic medium. This search echoes the artist’s engagement with his own identity shaped by his belonging to different cultures, evading any predefined and homogenized narrative of cultural identity. Formally, this takes shape in the examination of the audio-visual languages of cinema, theatre, but especially television and, in doing so, the work contextually addresses and subverts the hegemonic knowledges and homogenised representations of culture(s) inscribed in the language of television, especially its stereotypical, racist representation of Africa and its Diasporas. This homogenised, stereotyped language of TV is not only shattered through the fragmentation of the image, but also by drawing from many sources and uniting seemingly opposed ideas and imaginaries. In the emerging ruptures arises the possibility to imagine identity, culture and world anew.