A work in the National Gallery’s current exhibition If you prick us, do we not bleed? by the Gallery’s 2021 Artist in Residence Ali Cherri, has been acquired by the Contemporary Art Society for the programme’s partner venue the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry.

The announcement follows the Lebanese‐born artist’s recent award of the Silver Lion for Promising Young Participant at the 2022 Venice Biennale. As part of the National Gallery’s Artist in Residence programme, the Contemporary Art Society acquires a work from the resulting exhibition for the  permanent collection of a partner museum.

The Madonna of the Cat, after Barocci, 2022 is from a group of works created by Ali Cherri for his residency and exhibition at the National Gallery which responds to paintings in the Gallery’s collection that were vandalised (in this case Barocci’s Madonna of the Cat, c1575.)

The bird in this cabinet references the goldfinch clutched by the baby Jesus in the painting by Barocci that was attacked in 1990. According to legend, the goldfinch received the bright red markings around its beak from a drop of blood that fell from Jesus Christ as he carried the cross to his crucifixion. Here, the bird lays beneath a porcelain cast of a sculpted hand.

This work was chosen by the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry for the connections that can  be made with it to sculpture and other objects in their collection including their extensive natural sciences collections. The religious iconography of the goldfinch was considered particularly fitting with nearby Coventry Cathedral.

The Madonna of the Cat, after Barocci, 2022 is part of an exhibition of new work by Cherri that considers how histories of trauma can be explored through a response to museum and gallery collections. Following their showing at the National Gallery (until 12 June) the works will be displayed at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum later this year.

The exhibition If you prick us, do we not bleed? started with research in the Gallery’s archive, from which Cherri uncovered accounts of five National Gallery paintings that were vandalised while on display. He was struck by the public’s highly emotional response to these attacks, finding that newspaper articles would describe the damages as if they were wounds inflicted on a living being – even referring to the Gallery’s conservators as surgeons.

He also noticed an overwhelming urge to ‘heal’, make good and hide the damage. This personification of artworks, and the suggestion that they can experience distress, is reflected in the exhibition’s title, taken from Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice.

In response, Cherri presents a series of mixed media, sculptural installations that recall aspects of each painting and that imagine its life following the vandalism. They bring into question what Cherri calls the ‘politics of visibility’; the decisions we make about how, and to what extent, we accept trauma within museums. By translating each damaged work into a series of objects, Cherri reminds us that we are never truly the same after experiencing violence.

Ali Cherri: If you prick us, do we not bleed? will come to The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry later in 2022 with dates to be announced. For more information on The Herbert visit: theherbert.org