The Foundling musuem (in London) have announed their major exhibition this Summer will be entitled Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 years in comics and will (it says here)...
Enter into the world of superheroes in this first major exhibition to explore the representation of foundlings, orphans, adoptees, and foster children in comics, graphic novels and sequential art from around the globe.
DC’s Superman, who was found by his adoptive parents, is one of many comic heroes who are orphans: Spider-Man’s parents die in a plane crash; Batman’s parents are killed in a street robbery; and Black Panther – whose mother dies soon after childbirth and whose father is killed – is known as ‘the Orphan King’. Marvel’s X-Men experience both discrimination and social ostracisation. The superheroes’ early life experiences impact on their roles and the stance they take over good and evil in their comic lives.
Three new artistic commissions that examine care identity and experience have been specially created for the exhibition by comic artists Asia Alfasi, Bex Glendining and Woodrow Phoenix.
Loaned works will sit alongside objects from the collection, to encourage an exploration of the parallels between real foundlings and their illustrated counterparts.
Superheroes, Orphans & Origins has its own origins in a previous work commissioned by the Museum in 2014, when care-experienced poet and performer Lemn Sissay OBE created the site-specific piece Superman was a Foundling, a poem printed on the walls of the Museum’s Study Studio.
The exhibition opens 1st April 2022 and runs until 28th August 2022.
See further coverage in this article (which first appeared in The Observer on Sunday 16th Jan)
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