Disintegration at Hydra (from the Rape of the Sabine Women)

Artist Eve Sussman American, born Great Britain, 1961

Date2005

MediumDigital chromogenic print

Dimensionsheight, width, and depth: 39 3/8 × 51 13/16 in. (100 × 131.6 cm)
frame: 46 × 63 3/4 in. (116.8 × 161.9 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LineGift from the collection of Drs. Carlos Garcia-Velez and W. Kent Davis, Chapel Hill, NC

Object number2022.1

On View

Not on view

Label TextThis work by artist and filmmaker Eve Sussman is a digital still from her feature-length film The Rape of the Sabine Women, which retells an ancient Roman legend: the myth of the Sabine women, who were taken away from their families by Roman soldiers and forced to become their wives. The captured women eventually reconciled the two sides.

Throughout art history, numerous artists have depicted the drama of the Sabine women as a traditional story of symbolic conquest. Sussman alters this narrative to address illusions about ideal male/female relationships, presenting people who appear to be frozen in an eternal argument. As Sussman has said, “The myth is really about loneliness … the loneliness and desire of real life.”
[L. Dougherty, 2023]ProvenanceCreated by the artist, 2005; with Lorena Ruiz de Villa Contemporary Art, Barcelona; acquired by Dr. Carlos Garcia-Velez and Dr. W. Kent Davis, Chapel Hill, NC, 2008Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection Reimagined," November 27, 2023-June 4, 2024. Object Rights Statement

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