Quite a few visitors wandering around the Arsenale at the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice picked one of the double-sided posters left on wooden pallets outside Steve McQueen's film installation entitled "Ashes".
The posters featured on one side a blown-up, grainy image of a handsome young man - Ashes - sitting on the prow of a boat and looking at the horizon, facing away from the camera.
On the other side the image is overprinted with a transcription of the short script that accompanies the video installation. The latter consists in a projection of footage shot on Super8 film in 2002 by Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller.
The images - part of unused takes for McQueen's short Carib's Leap - show Ashes, a young Grenadian man sitting on the prow of a fishing boat at sea, at times smiling and grinning at the camera. The story on the soundtrack is told by Ashes' friends and was recorded by McQueen after he returned to the island in 2010 and found out that the young man had been murdered after he discovered a stash of drugs on a beach.
The film - originally commissioned by Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo, and showcased also in a London-based gallery at the end of 2014 - is accompanied in Venice by another video that shows Ashes' remains being transferred from an unmarked grave to his final resting place.
The re-burial phase introduces viewers to a new stage in the mourning process, but also prompts people to stop in the chaos of a huge art event such as the Venice Biennale and ponder about the loss of a young life.
As you watch the film, Ashes turns from a handsome young man into an abstract figure, a symbol that alerts viewers about the premature death of many young people, and of many young black men in particular. The fate of the young Grenadian man indirectly makes us think about episodes of racist violence such as Michael Brown fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last year, or Freddie Gray dying last month while under police custody in Baltimore.
Last year, in his acceptance speech for the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal at Harvard University, McQueen stated "The only doctrine I have as an artist is to not allow the dust of the past to settle." In a way, visitors picking a poster outside McQueen's installation help the artist and director not to let the dust of the past settle, since through the posters, Ashes' story keeps on circulating.
If you can't pick a poster at the Venice Biennale, here's Ashes' story, as recounted by his friends in the video: "I know Ashes as a friend. All of us were young, man. We grew up in one neighborhood. So, it's like we used to live in a ghetto. You understand. All of us dive together. Going fishing, diving, you know, everything. But you know, Ashes is a good guy, a brilliant guy in the ocean. You understand. But with this thing with the drugs thing there, I don't know where he found the drugs. I didn't know. He come out from the island, I just came from school in the evening, cleaning the house. And he came and he walk into the house with all the wet clothes on him, all the sand on his feet, and I ask him 'Ashes, I say what kind of thing is that? Don't you see I am cleaning and you just walk in like that?' He say 'right now, I am rich, I can do anything'. So I turn to him and my next friend turns to him and asks him 'well what?'. He turns and says, 'we found something on the island and we can't spend the money now'. So Kevin turned to him and says 'well just give it back'. We never knew he had found the drugs. You understand. But we go out as normal. And until we, till we hear other talk that they were camping in Isle de Ronde, you understand so they were going below the land, to behind, for the fish and they saw some drugs on the beach, so they saw it and nobody was there so they took it. And then things, some guys came investigating, finding out who is Ashes, who is this, who is that, you understand, who are the other guys. Then they kidnap one guy, I think the one guy say they beat him. So he had to talk for his life. So he talk and he sell out them others. And then they keep one guy, go with him in the van, they drive him around and they ask him to show them who is Ashes. So then the guy shows them who is Ashes. The night we sat down by the bus terminal and somebody came in and say 'Ashes, I just pass some guys in a car asking for you, you know' and Kevin says 'well if so, Ashes you better come out on the road now'. He says 'Man I don't really care you know'. When they came for him they said 'come let's go.' He says, 'I'm not going anywhere with all of you if you have to kill me, kill me here in me people's presence for them to see, I'm not going anywhere' and then they shoot him in the hand for him to let go of what he was holding. And when they shoot him in the hand, he let go but he tried to run and then they shoot him in the back and when he fell one of them guys went over to him and shoot him up around his belly and his legs and thing. And that was about it."
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