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Donald Rodney

In the House of My Father, 1996-1997

Photograph on paper on aluminium, 1220 x 1530 mm

In the House of My Father is a close-up photographic image of Donald Rodney’s hand, in which sits a minute sculpture of a house. The sculpture exists as an independent work, My Mother. My Father. My Sister. My Brother. It was constructed from pieces of Rodney’s own skin removed during one of the many operations he underwent to combat sickle cell anaemia, an inherited disease that affects people of African, Caribbean, Eastern Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian ancestry. Both works address Rodney’s sense of family and identity, as a British-born artist whose parents had emigrated from Jamaica, as well as themes relating to mortality and his own illness. The artist and curator Eddie Chambers has observed that ‘the house, a delicate, simple dwelling seemed to symbolise the fragility and the near-futility of Rodney having to live within a structure hopelessly unable to sustain itself or withstand even the smallest turbulence.’