Give me the Head of John the Baptist (1992)

Salome’s erotic dance drove the king to give her whatever she asked for. When the seventh veil fell, after all was said and done, she asked for the head of John the Baptist. A Bible story showing the power of desire. Not love, but desire. 

Dumas’s Give me the Head of John the Baptist is a seventeen-part installation of drawings loosely based on the biblical story of Salome and John the Baptist. The story involves a dance, a promise, and a tragic request. Rendered in ink, crayon and pencil, Dumas’s drawings depict this story of desire and resentment in a dreamlike and almost cinematic fashion.

Moving from scenes depicting Salome holding the Baptist’s bloodied head to her dancing with the head on a platter before then cutting to a close up of John’s disembodied head with the words “NO BODY” etched into the bottom of the frame, Dumas’s playfully rendered drawings capture the tragic moment of the shattering of child-like innocence by violence and desire.