Pandemic: Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Rania Mamoun

A hand-transcription in micro-script of Albert Camus’s The Plague (1948), an essay Medicine and Colonialism from A Dying Colonialism (1959) by Frantz Fanon, and poems by Rania Mamoun, a Sudanese author in exile in the United States written in 2020 during the pandemic.

Camus wrote The Plague in five parts, hence the five panels. The shape of the background to the text is based on a map of Oran, Algeria, the port town where The Plague is set. The red graph line running through the piece is based on the daily graphs of United States and world deaths during the pandemic in 2020. The tally marks hand-drawn as column dividers and on the bottom of each section each represent one death during the pandemic.

The brown and gold palette is based on land colors in northern Africa and the blue palette, the water. The water is collaged from painted and torn up pieces of Samuels’ recycled sketch books and the land colors are painted over the front or backs of Samuels’ drawings and prints.

Title: Pandemic: Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Rania Mamoun

Size: 388 inches x 50 inches (w x h)
Materials: recycled paper, Haruki paper, silk, ink
Date: 2022
Photographed by: Thomas Little