How do we make sense of violence? In The Other Repairmen, two figures seek to understand a threat to their surrounding environment, however they are only met with further questions.
The scene initially reads as peaceful, with a sweeping mountain landscape in the background and “repairmen” sitting atop a worn, cracked hammer. However, a tree violently impaled by several nails evokes a sense of foreboding.
The figure in the foreground holds a broken nail, tied together with rope. He attempts to understand the nail as a tool of violence, while also repairing it in hopes of putting it to better use. The hammer and nail is a multi-faceted visual metaphor, as both have the ability to inflict harm, or repair and rebuild.
Another figure sits on the opposite edge of the hammer, facing away from the viewer. He holds a nail subtly crisscrossed to form an X, suggesting a further threat, as X’s often symbolize death in Bak’s work. While the figures look to the nails for answers, they are unaware that they are sitting on the potential true perpetrator of violence. Without the hammer, the nails are essentially useless. Is the hammer simply a relic of the past or a current threat?
How do we make sense of the violence of the past in relation to current day? The figures (and the viewer) are asked to consider the structures of power which allow history to reoccur. Is it possible to rebuild a better world while the same systems of power remain in place?
Lilly Harvey (Guest writer)
BAK a Day, March 3, 2023
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A park bench made of stone.
No, a hammer made of stone, provides the work bench for the Repairmen.
The tree has been nailed.
The landscape of repairs.
A place of loss and hopelessness.
Why the hammer?
Why the nails?
Can our broken world be repaired?
If so, by whom?
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