Born in Providence, Rhode Island (United States) in 1944, Anthony Ramos lives and works in France. A performance and media artist, he was one of the first to use found footage from TV to articulate a critique of mass media and cultural domination. During the 1970s, Ramos combined art and activism. He demonstrated against the Vietnam War and gave a voice to persons living in precarious circumstances and marginalised communities. In his first video works, the artist engages in actions of great physical intensity, captured in a single take. In these tests of endurance, addressing himself directly to the viewer, he wordlessly enacts his political, antiracist and anticolonial contestation.

In Black and White, Ramos and his partner symbolically exchange their skin colours. Seen simultaneously, the two parts of the work suggest a dance in which the figures’ gestures echo each other. Each one nevertheless remains in their own space, each with their own music (as the sound tracks do not mix). The body makeup, a ritual artistic practice found in all civilisations throughout human history, serves here to interrogate in a subtle yet frontal way the stigma of “visible difference” which prevails in contemporary societies.

Marcella Lista, 2020