BLUE | Derek Jarman

Featured Artist

Derek Jarman

Curated by

Mirela Stoeac-Vlăduți

The exhibition BLUE | Derek Jarman has at its centre the video installation Blue which is both the manifesto and artistic testament of the well-known British artist/director/writer Derek Jarman, a personal exploration against death, AIDS. In the words of Derek Jarman himself, “Blue is the color of the sky, which, far above us, invisibly presides over everything. Blue is the color of distance. It is also the color of sorrow.” The installation presents a sensitive aural journey, positioned in front of a blue screen (a reference to Yves Klein's blue and the blue spots the artist begins to see when his vision is impaired), revealing key moments in Jarman's life – the first stirrings of love, the discovery of his own queer sexuality, fear of authorities, the hostile social environment, the struggle with HIV, the imminence of death and … the serenity of blue. The infinite, the abyss, but also the possibility of inner peace.

Blue is a manifesto for the right to life and fair treatment for every human being, revealing the dynamics of a society that lacks empathy and of an unjust and discriminatory social system. Through this cinematic meditation, contained in the sensibility of a single color, Derek Jarman exposes his own vulnerability and inner turmoil in his struggle with illness and death. But what makes Jarman's work so important is that, aesthetically, it engages all forms of representation in the process of overpowering the sexualized iconography of queer people.

The exhibition BLUE | Derek Jarman at the contemporary art gallery META Spatiu is a chronicle of fear and sexual repression, the devastation caused by illness, and Jarman’s inimitable courage and grace, a biography and an honest tribute to Derek Jarman's uncompromising life and art.

Derek Jarman

Britain's most controversial filmmaker, artist and director, Derek Jarman (1942-1994) was also a gifted writer, artist, gardener, designer and an outspoken AIDS and gay rights activist. Jarman's story stretches from his childhood in post-war Britain to the Slade School of Art and the making of numerous acclaimed films, including Sebastiane, Jubilee, Caravaggio and the video installation Blue (in the collection of some of the world's greatest museums and exhibited in international galleries and art centres – MoMA, Tate, David Zwirner etc.). Premiered in 1993 at the Venice Biennale and simultaneously broadcast on Channel 3, Blue became one of the most acclaimed works of art in the world. The one who helped Jarman make his project a reality was his good friend and film producer James Mackay, along with the artist's other friends, actors Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry and John Quentin.