Pyramids of Survival

Description

Artist Notes

This work portrays Israel's man-made famine and the weaponisation of food and water. It depicts a scene of desperation, collective struggle, violence, and sacrifice. The faceless figures are meant to show that anyone could be in this position, or that it will happen elsewhere after Gaza. The monochromic figures represent the individuality within the masses, with everyone trying to climb over the crowds to survive. The act is meant to be chaotic, highlighting the necessity of struggle. Those at the bottom, unable to reach, bear the weight of starvation. This expresses the paradox of humanity and the suffering of the Gazans, attempting to show that survival comes at a cost.

Preservation Notes

MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION Physical painting. Acrylic on paper canvas, 43 cm wide x 30 cm high. The medium field records the support as paper canvas and the paint layer as acrylic; no materials were recorded by the archivist, so the entries now held in the materials field (acrylic paint, paper canvas) are derived from the medium field and the description only. The description states that the composition is built from a densely packed crowd of faceless, monochrome figures around an aid truck and that the palette is restricted to three colours, with red strokes running through the figures. No condition assessment has been made; the physical work has not been examined and no visual claims about its present state are made here. CONSERVATION REQUIREMENTS Paper and paper-canvas supports are vulnerable to cockling, edge tears, and creasing. Store and display flat, never rolled. Window-mount with acid-free, lignin-free board and hinge with Japanese tissue and starch paste; do not dry-mount and do not use pressure-sensitive tape at any point. Handle by the mount or by supported edges rather than by the sheet itself, and keep the work in stable relative humidity away from direct sunlight. UV-filtering glazing is recommended for both display and storage framing. The saturated reds, yellows, and oranges are the passages most at risk of fading; because the description identifies the red strokes as the carrier of the work's central meaning, any loss of red saturation would be a loss of content as well as of colour, and light exposure should be limited and logged accordingly. DIGITAL RECORD The original capture was scanned in Sweden as a TIFF master in high, medium, and low resolution variants. The medium and low resolution variants are held outside this archive. CURRENT ASSET: TIFF master, 7021 x 10088 pixels, 202.7 MB. Filename FullPyramidsofSurvivalAlijila.tif. Uploaded 2026-09-09. This record now holds the full-resolution TIFF master, uploaded without conversion. It replaces the previous derivative (JPEG, 332 x 479 pixels, 42 KB), which was the smallest asset in the collection and was rejected as unusable for reproduction or study. Effective scan resolution: approximately 595 DPI measured against the recorded physical dimensions, close to double the 300 DPI archival standard. This is the highest scan resolution recorded anywhere in this collection and now serves as the reference standard for the archive, exceeding Between Two Worlds (6011 x 4800, 82.6 MB), which previously held that position. Maximum reproduction size at 300 DPI: 23.4 x 33.6 inches (59.4 x 85.4 cm), roughly double the physical dimensions of the work on each axis. At 200 DPI, suitable for viewing at distance, it will carry 35.1 x 50.4 inches (89.2 x 128 cm). At the true physical size of the artwork the file resolves at approximately 595 DPI, which is sufficient for facsimile-grade reproduction and for close forensic study of individual figures. Status: this record meets and exceeds archival standard. No rescan required. The reproduction blocker previously recorded against this work is cleared. DELIVERY NOTE: At 202.7 MB this is the largest asset in the archive, and TIFF is not a browser-native format. The master should be treated as the preservation copy only. Any website, catalogue, or print-proofing use should draw derivatives through Sanity's image transformation pipeline rather than serving the master file directly.

Tags