Archival pigment print mounted on aluminium Dibond.
One Size Only / 40.6 x 50.8 cm / 16 x 20 in
Hand-signed by the artist, with title, date, and edition number inscribed in ink on an archival label affixed to the reverse side of the mounted photograph
Nothing in this room was found; everything was placed. The walls are a soft mint that reads as institutional and domestic at once; floral lace curtains filter the daylight into a flat, even glow. A framed red cross, a caduceus, an ornamental clock on a wrought-iron stand, a vintage radio on the shelf. Idun-Tawiah builds his hospital the way a set designer would, prop by prop, summoning a period that may never have existed. The IV stand is real enough to hang saline; the bed is a child’s white iron frame. Verisimilitude here is a decision, not an accident.
At the centre, a boy lies propped against a pillow in a white mesh jersey, navy shorts and striped tube socks, one leg drawn up. His father, in a physician’s white coat, leans in close and tends to him with both hands. A young nurse in starched uniform and cap stands slightly apart, writing on a clipboard, eyes lowered. Care flows in a single direction, from the standing adults toward the reclining child, and the composition holds that hierarchy the way an altarpiece holds its saints.
What the staging protects is a wish. In a series grieving an absent father, this constructed clinic lets the father return as the one who heals, who sits at the bedside and does not leave. The fiction is unashamed of itself; we are inside memory, not documentary fact. Idun-Tawiah understands that an invented scene can carry a truth the candid one cannot, and he lets the artifice do the emotional work, presenting devotion as something built, furnished, and lit on purpose.
Nothing in this room was found; everything was placed. The walls are a soft mint that reads as institutional and domestic at once; floral lace curtains filter the daylight into a flat, even glow. A framed red cross, a caduceus, an ornamental clock on a wrought-iron stand, a vintage radio on the shelf. Idun-Tawiah builds his hospital the way a set designer would, prop by prop, summoning a period that may never have existed. The IV stand is real enough to hang saline; the bed is a child’s white iron frame. Verisimilitude here is a decision, not an accident.
At the centre, a boy lies propped against a pillow in a white mesh jersey, navy shorts and striped tube socks, one leg drawn up. His father, in a physician’s white coat, leans in close and tends to him with both hands. A young nurse in starched uniform and cap stands slightly apart, writing on a clipboard, eyes lowered. Care flows in a single direction, from the standing adults toward the reclining child, and the composition holds that hierarchy the way an altarpiece holds its saints.
What the staging protects is a wish. In a series grieving an absent father, this constructed clinic lets the father return as the one who heals, who sits at the bedside and does not leave. The fiction is unashamed of itself; we are inside memory, not documentary fact. Idun-Tawiah understands that an invented scene can carry a truth the candid one cannot, and he lets the artifice do the emotional work, presenting devotion as something built, furnished, and lit on purpose.