I am currently invigilating in the Studio 3 gallery at the University of Kent, where Ana Maria Pacheco's Shadows of the Wanderer (2008) is in residence (Jan 17th 2011 - May 17th 2011). The sculpture includes two figures in the foreground; a young man, struggling with an older man on his back. It has links to Virgil's Aeneid, when Aeneas carries his father, Achises, out of the burning city of Troy; a journey that will end with the creation of Rome. However, Pacheco leaves any interpretation of the piece very open to the viewer. It can conjure up ideas of the burdens we carry through life, always being followed by the shadows of our past, or the idea of the asylum seeker, with concerned witnesses following; we must not forget however, that as viewers we too are witnesses.
To digress from the sculpture for just a second; I have just finished reading Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago. To be more precise, I turned the final page of the book on the day that I first saw Pacheco's sculpture. With the image of desolate and desperate Russia fresh in my mind, I can only presume that I was a little biased when arriving at my own personal interpretation of the piece. Yury Andreyevich's journey from Moscow, where he grew up, through the atrocities of the First World War, to the rural Russian Urals seems like a journey that could be illustrated perfectly in Shadows of the Wanderer. In fact, it could finely illustrate the journey of any Russian person during this period. The idea of carrying the burden of one's own beliefs at a time when beliefs and theories were very dangerous things resonates very believably throughout the piece.
For me, however, it symbolises the fight to save what one cares about, whether that be a belief system, family, or indeed, Aeneas' father. It personifies the journey through life, in its rawest form. We all struggle down our own path in life, meandering and turning, and humanity will stand there and watch, albeit with concern upon its exaggerated face.
