SIMON FUJIWARA: This is one in a series of works that reference Picasso. And I do ask myself why there are so many references to Picasso from Who the Bær. I would imagine one of the answers from Who the Bær would be: When you think of an artist, you think of Picasso.

Who the Bær is a character I developed during the lockdown, during the pandemic. So Who the Bær is an image of a bear, and not even a real bear. They live in a world of images. They have no gender. They have no race. They have no nationality. They don't even have a clear design. But one thing they do have is this desire to become an image. They live in this world of images constantly transforming into every image that they see.

There are several strands to the Who the Bær universe. In one of the strands, Who the Bær deals with art history, and transforms iconic paintings and artworks. The painting is a reference to Picasso’s ‘Massacre in Korea’ a commission, a kind of piece of propaganda to talk about the war that was happening in Korea. I thought that this idea of making a painting that operates as propaganda is somehow difficult to reconcile as an artist. And also somehow very relevant today because pictures are so utilised and art and digital images are so much in an economy today. I thought what would be interesting would be to think about Picasso’s motive for making this painting which is to bring attention to a war, a massacre.

And when I started thinking about that I had this image in my mind immediately. At the centre of my version of this painting, there needed to be someone asking you to look at a picture. It was the image of a figure thrusting, a picture of the ‘Guernica’ to soldiers. When Picasso approached the subject of the Korean War, having never been to Korea. It’s alleged that he only saw it as a picture in the newspaper. He decided to lean on art historical references. So, he looked at the painting of ‘The Execution of Emperor Maximilian’ by Edouard Manet, and the execution by Francisco Goya. And I thought, this is already a kind of meta-image that Picasso’s painting is a picture of a picture of a picture of war. And so, we're not dealing with an image of war. We're dealing as well with a history of images. I wanted to put yet another picture inside that. I chose the ‘Guernica’ because it’s sort of what we think of today as the ultimate image of war. And this sort of freed me to make many paintings inside the same painting. The left and right as almost two different paintings, and the ‘Guernica’ as a third painting in the centre.