Shaykh Che Guevara - Q-News July 2006, Issue 367

It is the most marketable and moving of modern images - an icon whose malleability proclaims its significance. Jennifer Varela and Amina Nawaz find a new exhibit dedicated to Che Guevara stirring.

From Kuala Lumpur to Karachi, Osama Bin Laden has become an upside-down world’s revolutionary icon. His picture adorns t-shirts, posters and stickers: serene, smiling, calm, without a hint of his lethal potential. His austere theology would probably look unkindly on such idolatry. Perhaps he got a fatwa from his friend Mullah Omar, whose own crudely drawn mug has also been spotted on t-shirts in London recently. Neither of these cave-dwelling antagonists could have done it without the greatest of modern political icons. Bin Laden is in Che Guevara’s debt.

The Victoria & Albert Museum’s new exhibit Che Guevara - Revolutionary & Icon: The Story of an Image, focuses on the most reproduced photograph in history titled Guerrillero Heroico, taken by Alberto “Korda” Diaz on 5 March 1960, during a speech by Fidel Castro. Though Ernesto “Che” Guevara appeared on stage for only few short moments, Korda managed to capture the ultimate image of revolution. The exhibition chronicles the history of the photograph from its origins in Havana to its emergence as a mass-produced poster by the Italian entrepreneur Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who catapulted the image of Che to an eager audience of activists in need of a unifying symbol amidst the global political upheaval of the late 60s. From the streets of Latin America to murals in Northern Ireland, posters in Vietnam and banners in Palestine - this is the story of how Che was recast as the idol of worldwide revolution, an icon for hire.

Story of an Image develops thematically, taking us through a series of well-designed segments divided into representations of the revolutionary - the saint, the pop icon, and the emblem. Most striking is the perplexing amalgamation of causes personified through the use of Che as a global symbol of counter-culture, plastered on everything from banners and posters, to lip balm and coffee mugs. The inevitable commercialisation of such a bankable figure, the McChe phenomenon, leaves us with a feeling of a ‘dream deferred’, with Che, once the epitome of righteous struggle, reduced to ‘a raisin in the sun’ of his own capitalist nightmare. Edmundo Desnoes, a Cuban cultural historian and writer, injects some optimism here: “Che’s image may be cast aside, bought and sold and deified, but it will form a part of the universal system of the revolutionary struggle, and can recover its original meaning at any moment.”

And so it does. Along with the trite, the exhibit presents dramatic images of struggle, loss and inspiration, illustrating that although we may have become desensitised to Che because of its ubiquitous mercantile use, the commercial impact of the image is derived from its original power as a symbol of possibilities. A particularly poignant segment of the exhibit displays images of “Che the Christ”, comprising of Guevara’s enigmatic facial features interposed with a symbolic crown of thorns, followed by Warhol-inspired prints featuring “Cher Guevara”, Che Madonna and, disturbingly, Che Dubya.

This diverse application of Che the symbol has strong contemporary resonance, where icons, revolutionaries and heroes are all in the eye of the beholder. It is why notorious figures, like Bin-Laden, can be accused of “pulling a Che” - paralleling themselves both in iconographic depiction and connotative value. Guevara’s philosophy - “wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached a receptive ear” - would not find itself a stranger in the current malaise of international politics.

The exhibit thus calls into question the ‘originality’ of symbolic icons, by forcing the viewer to accept both Che, as an emblematic reflection of radical Latin American politics, and Che, as a Bart Simpson doll. In accepting this, we acknowledge the nebulous nature of icons, their constant redefinition and our own inability to contain the icon within its ‘original’ paradigm. In the words of Sean O’Hagan, “Che has remained more Lennon than Lenin”.

It would be possible to view the exhibit in twenty minutes although this wouldn’t do justice to its elegantly designed layout. The exhibit is meant to be savoured, and each image considered. Free from dogmatic political positions, the exhibit combines a deliberate ambiguity with a diverse collection of artefacts, thus freeing the viewer to draw independent conclusions, if any may be reached at all. Its great strength is in its multimedia approach - films play alongside photographs, advertisements and art pieces. One of the most stirring images of the exhibit is of Korda himself, holding the negative of his fateful shot. When asked for his thoughts on the image, Korda revealed that he was struck by the look of melancholy on Che’s exhausted face absorbing the multitudes that had piled into the streets, as if to question what his efforts had achieved. So many have looked upon the same face and have instead found passionate conviction, intensity and unceasing strength. The power of this exhibit is that ultimately, both views are correct. Ernesto, the Argentine doctor, and Che, the Latin American revolutionary, concomitantly present within the man in Korda’s photograph. As Ariel Dorfmann, the Chilean writer and activist, observed, “Deep inside that t-shirt where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with impatience.”

Che Guevara - Revolutionary and Icon: The Story of an Image is at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 28 August 2006.