ABSTRACT
Much of the scholarly work on art produced in conditions of crisis, during wartime or under siege singles out and celebrates resistance: art as an expression of resilience in the face of oppression; art that stakes a claim to representation, redresses a historical wrong, exposes injustice, or defends memory; art that, by and large, is anti-state or anti-the-powers-that-be. In an explicit act of resistance against Fascist barbarity, such destruction itself became the subject of image-making. Finally, Moti’s cinematic reproduction of the Empty Frame tour draws attention to movement – to those processes of circulation, imagination and reception, in which in a globalizing world, as Arjun Appadurai puts it, ‘moving images meet deterritorialized viewers’. The postwar explosion of Christ pictures is a manifestation of deep uncertainty and crisis; they constitute an effort to ensure the solace of home and security in the face of what many Christians understood as their own imminent annihilation.
