From its very beginning, ekphrasis has been based on the idea of convergence – as the tension between different media lies at its core. Traditionally, it has been defined as the description and analysis of works of art in poetry, and so it has been understood as the verbalization of visual images (Sager Eidt). The paper delves into the concept of ekphrasis in the light of contemporary definitions that include non-verbal media as targets (Killander et al.; Sager Eidt; Bruhn; Pethö), in order to investigate its use in the contemporary music video.
The paper will concentrate, in particular, on "Apesh-t," a video for a track by Beyoncé and Jay Z from the album Everything Is Love (2018). The video is filmed in different interiors of the Louvre, where the singers appear, together with an ensemble of dancers, in front of selected artworks. Alexandra Thomas has described the video as "an embodied intervention in Western Art". She characterises the art works included in the music video as manifestations of colonial supremacy, and the Louvre itself as a space which sanctifies and confirms the canon.
I will argue that the use of ekphrasis in the video – through elaboration (close-ups and editing) and repurposing of the source material (paintings and sculptures) – functions as an intervention in memory politics, through the de-colonisation of cultural memory. The device draws the attention of the viewer, not only to what the artwork represents (and thus, deems worthy of remembering), but also to what it fails to represent: the agency of non-white, non-western bodies and identities.
The paper includes close readings of the ekphrastic re-configuration of two works of European art – Marie Benoist's "Portrait d'une négresse" (1800) and Jacques-Louis David's "Portrait of Madame Récamier" (1800) – in order to discuss the politically charged mis-en-scene; and explore the wider role which the music video genre could have in the deconstruction and reconstruction of images of the colonial and post-colonial Other in contemporary culture.
