In Dark Continent, a solitary female figure – shrouded in black paint, her hair golden – inhabits an imaginary monochromatic landscape of silver, grey and black hues, its deep lustrous blackness punctuated by luminous gilded solar/lunar symbols. At times contemplative and elusive, at times provocative and alluring, she occupies each frame seemingly absorbed in her own private reverie, yet occasionally challenges the viewer with a direct gaze, thus breaking the illusion of her isolated existence, and con- fronting inherent voyeurisms with a prophetic sense of foreboding.
This body of work represents an imaginary riposte to the nineteenth-century myth of Africa as the ‘dark continent’, a sinister place of danger and chaos. Playing with notions of colonial ‘discovery’, Viktor invites viewers to contemplate the meaning of darkness and light, through a communion of past, present and future tenses and a creative engagement of speculative visual fiction and the birthing of new mythologies. Accompanied by an extended caption-poem of exquisite, redolent image titles, the series’ existential questions remain unanswered.