The Binding/ 2. Offering

In the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of African Art.

The sheep or ram in the biblical narrative is the substitute that Abraham kills as the ‘burnt offering’ instead of his son. In the print, Offering, the blind-embossed sheepskin refers to several absences: the absent body of the child (in the print the sheepskin literally covers the entire body and only the head hovers over the skin), the absent body of the sheep that is now flattened out like a map, and the absent sheepskin that is only revealed in the print through its trace.