Universal International

Universal International is a graphic research project by artist Lyndon Barrois Jr. that tracks the image of the donkey across filmic history. This research has been represented, to date, as a two-person exhibition with Addoley Dzegede at Sharp Projects, Copenhagen (2021); with printed collages in a group exhibition at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin (2023); and in installation and sculpture in a solo exhibition at Artists Space, New York (2022), which also included an artist’s publication, Some Thoughts on Producing a Wand.¹

Barrois Jr.’s interest in recording the recurring appearance of donkeys in cinema began when watching the film La Macchina Ammazzacattivi (Rossellini, 1953) in which a photographer’s cursed camera petrifies a donkey in a village square by re-capturing its image. The film serves as a parable about the devastating potential of photographic representation. Barrois Jr. later noticed what appeared to be the same donkey in a completely different film setting, a kind of vampiric reverberation of an identical figure, repeated across history. From Black Narcissus (Powell/Pressburger, 1948), Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966) to Big Top Pee Wee (Kleiser, 1988), the donkey has traversed time, geography, and genre on screen, which echoes its condition as the eternal symbol for labour throughout different cultural contexts..Read the full article in the printed issue. Get OVER Journal 5

‍