Mariam Jafri Vs. Maryam Jafri

Julian Ross:

The conundrum that became the foundation of Mariam Jafri Vs. Maryam Jafri resides in and around a photograph licensed by Getty Images. In said photograph, we see two disembodied silicone-based feet in the foreground with their toes punctured by needles; the sculpture is Maryam Jafri’s Anxiety, a readymade artwork she originally procured from a sex shop and placed on display in the Focus section of Frieze Art Fair in London, October 2017. In the background of the photograph, there are some other objects on display, and a woman browsing the art fair in the background. The photograph was taken by Leon Neal and, after being first published in the newspaper The Guardian as the lead image for the fair, is now on sale as a photograph licensed by Getty Images with the sculptural work miscredited to Mariam Jafri, a misspelling of the artist’s name. In this essayistic video, Maryam Jafri dives into the rabbit hole of copyright issues in a monotone voiceover to trace the ownership of various objects and images for sale. As she says, «it just goes on and on and becomes horribly complicated.»
This 2019 video by Copenhagen-based artist Maryam Jafri is one of several works of hers that tackles the question of image ownership as it pertains to Getty Images. It follows on from her photography series Versus (2012-2015) in which Jafri questions the unauthorised copyright of images taken on independence days in newly independent African nations; Getty Vs. Ghana (2012), for example, brings together questions on colonialism and image ownership by pointing out the irony of the photographic subject being about liberation. Mariam Jafri Vs. Maryam Jafri brings these concerns closer to home by placing her own experience of dispossession at centre stage. In humorous yet defiant tone, Jafri takes back control by reinserting the photograph-for-sale by Getty into her video-for-sale.

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Mariam Jafri Vs. Maryam Jafri | Video Essay | Maryam Jafri | UK 2019 | 12’

Maryam Jafri's website