The painting depicts an Iraqi detainee victim in a Burberry hood standing atop a Louis Vuitton suitcase, and asks, “What says colonization better than a touch of old Europe?” This painting, “Electrifying!!!!” by Carter Kusterg, is just one example of the current exhibit in the Zilkha Gallery, which features artistic examination of human abuses during wartime and especially occupation.
The exhibit, entitled “The Disasters of War: From Goya to Golub,” will be on display until the end of the semester and uses mediums such as sound, moving image, photography and paintings to showcase the terrors and outcomes of war. A show running this long is rare in Zilkha and has taken a lot of collaborative work between curator Nina Felshin, the artists and the University. Some of the pieces were commissioned especially for this show, such as the paintings “Waiting” and ?“Writing a Memo (in Blood )” by Melanie Baker. They show cropped images that were originally photographs printed in The New York Times.
Felshin started working on this show last April after seeing a show at the International Center of Photography.
“I wanted to put the horrific photos of the Abu Gharib detention and torture center into the context of fine artists,” Felshin said. “The focused idea of the show would address torture as a form of war and how this country has basically sanctioned it.”
Three videos are on constant play in different parts of the gallery that show the effect of war on individual people. Especially touching was “untitled part 1: everything and nothing”, a beautiful 40-minute conversation with Soha Bechara. Bechara is an ex-Lebanese national resistance fighter who was detained for 10 years, six of them in isolation, in the El-Khiam interrogation and torture center of South Lebanon. The documentary is filmed in her dorm room in Paris, where she is studying international law. Her softness and humanity shine throughout her dialogue.
“She seems so thoughtful and undogmatic,” Felshin said. “The video shows what wars of occupation really do to people, on psychological terms.”
Two other videos were created by Andrea Wonzy, a recent Wesleyan graduate, for a class on art and politics she took with Felshin. In the videos former Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey is the central figure as he tells of his experiences going through dehumanizing and humiliating training. He was honorably discharged in December 2003 after 12 years of service and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
“I’d like to start with my own childhood,” Massey said in the video. “The dehumanization of war starts then. My first hero was Rambo.”
Juxtaposed next to Massey’s monologue is a two-minute video, “Good Boy” by Aaron Young. The video shows a dog learning how to attack by holding onto a rope with only his teeth and flailing in midair. In the background is heard the words “good boy” repeated over and over again and loud barks from the dog. Next to the testimonies of veterans of war, “Good Boy” challenges the viewer to see the similarities in the way the United States trains its soldiers and the way attack dogs are trained.
The men are treated sadistically in training and then taught to do the same,“ Felshin said.
Among these more contemporary works are five etchings by Goya from his series ”The Disasters of War.“ Created in the late 1800s, they depict the occupation of Spain by Napoleon’s army during the Peninsula War of the 19th century. Some of the few pieces from the University’s own collection in the exhibit, they portray public brutal deaths such as hangings and burnings.
Two paintings entitled ”Interrogation I“ and ”Interrogation III“ by Leon Golub are massive in size and take up almost whole walls. They each are acrylic on linen and were created in 1980-1981. Both show two soldiers interrogating and torturing naked individuals.
In the back corner of the Zilkha Gallery is a work comprised of digital files printed directly on to acrylic mirror sheet tiled substrate, barbed wire, and a CD sound loop called ”Pressed: When Words Were Earth“ created in 2003 by Andrew Johnson. Bulldozer tracks in the shape of an Islamic pattern are actually mirrors with photographs on them. They lead to the back of the room where the image of the back of a Caterpillar bulldozer is seen on mirrors, the same kind of bulldozer that was used to raise the Palestinian settlements in Israel/Palestine. The mirrors with the image of the Caterpillar tractor are in the pattern of the Jewish Star of David. On the sides of the walls are blue mirrors with jagged metallic mirrors in front, symbolizing the demolishing of the olive fields.
”There were a lot of powerful emotions packed into just a few rooms,“ said Rebecca Chavez ’08. ”The magnitude of the art, the various voices coming from the video installments, and the emotional impact of the different works all combined together to be almost overwhelming, but I think instead conveyed a significant message about war.“
In Zilkha’s South Gallery is the photograph exhibit ”Inconvenient Evidence: Iraqi Prison Photographs from Abu Ghraib,“ curated by Brian Wallis and co-organized by the International Center for Photography in New York and The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. All photographs were originally printed in newspapers and are blurry images photographed from cell phone cameras or personal cameras.
In the statement on the exhibit wall, Brian Wallis writes that ”The goal of this exhibit is to elicit further discussion about what these pictures mean, to address not only what the photographs depict but also what they say about how we used images to understand and shape our world.“
”Some theater classes and other classes have come through the exhibit,“ said Luling Ostofsky ’06. ”I think Writer’s Block wants to come to write and use the exhibit as a prompt. It has been kind of disappointing that not that many people have come. In general not that many people come, but this has generated more than usual.“
”The Disasters of War: From Goya to Golub“ will run until the end of the fall semester. The gallery is free and open to the public. For more information go to www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.
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