Carlos Idun-Tawiah Ghanaian, b. 18/5/1997
Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs
A child's bedroom in black and white, with floral wallpaper covering every inch of the wall behind. A young man in a striped shirt and braces kneels on the carpet, bent right over, fitting a shoe onto a boy's foot. The boy sits on the floor in a checked shirt and pale trousers, leaning back on one hand to watch, a wristwatch loose on the other wrist. A second shoe, patent and polished, waits on the carpet between them.
The room has been dressed with everything a child accumulates. A teddy bear on the chest of drawers, a lamp switched on, a small framed picture of a car, three drawings taped up on the wallpaper, one of them with MAMA written across it in a child's hand. None of it is doing anything except being there, which is exactly the point. This is a room that keeps things.
Neither face is available. Both heads are down and both are looking at the same foot, and the entire transaction runs through four hands and a shoe. The photograph is in black and white, and that takes the Christmas out of Christmas Shoes and leaves the kneeling. It is a picture of somebody on the floor doing a small thing for somebody who cannot yet do it himself, photographed as though it mattered.
