Visual artist to release Tsunami video
Shock-artist Christopher Irons who massacred chickens for art will release a music video inspired by the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami.
The award-winning artist turned artiste said that the video entitled Tsunami should increase his exposure, despite its rock sound.
The video will be released this month in support of his 2008 album which has increased relevance following the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. The song although inspired by the disaster is really about sex, he said.
“Because I liken a Tsunami to an orgasm, take you where no one has been before,” he said about the song. “It was inspired by the 2004 disaster but really I was singing about my lady friend.”
Irons’ head-biting, throat-slashing and hanging of chickens in a display of “art” in 2007 got him kicked-out of exhibitions in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. Critics, he said, misunderstood the commentary; it was about the trans-atlantic slave and the use of white and black chickens signified the racial divide.
“In September 2007, I was invited to show at the Institute of Jamaica. My stay was short lived, when the show re-opened I was asked to take out some of what I had or withdraw. Persons thought I should be taken before the courts,” he told the Observer.
A graduate of the Edna Manley School, born in 1973, his art and particularly sculptures comment on corruption and police brutality. Irons won the prestigious Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Award in 2002; Wray and Nephew Spirit of Jamaica Competition in 1996; and Purchase Award (Biennial Exhibition) the National Gallery of Jamaica in 2002.
He is also an art teacher at Ascot High School in Greater Portmore.