Donald Evans

Abstract

This article aims to recover the work of American artist Donald Evans (1945–1977), who operated on the fringes of conceptual art. Evans created postage stamps for imaginary nations, which he collected in his Catalogue of the World. Evans’s system of images, painstakingly drawn on paper and painted with watercolors, references the decolonizing world of the 1960s–70s. Through fictional countries like the “Oriental” state of Adjudani, or the former colonies of Katibo and Amis et Amants, the artist captured the volatile international scene of his day, torn by the violent forces of colonial heritage. Painting and cataloging went hand in hand in his project, which attempted—not always successfully—to arouse critical thinking about domination through images, the structuration of different worldviews, and the predatory dimension of cataloging.