In 2006, the group exhibition Heads opened in London. According to Sprovieri Gallery’s press release, “much of the work in the exhibition has taken the purposelessness of making a portrait today as its point of departure. In dispensing with the history of the subject, the head assumes a peculiar versatility.” Jimmie Durham’s Head on a plate made for the same exhibition takes us closer to a more specific iconography: that of the head of St John the Baptist, regularly depicted with two heads, one attached to his body and another upon a plate either in his hands or at his feet.