Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq at School of Visual Arts
By Ryan • Jan 9th, 2008 • Category: News for Creatives (archives)“NEW YORK.-The School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq,” an exhibition that brings together the creative output of five emerging and established artists, each of whom has a direct experience of the war in Iraq: Army Major Peter Buotte, Army Sergeant Aaron Hughes, embedded artist Steve Mumford, embedded photographer Lucian Read, and Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Roa. Curated by Francis Di Tommaso, director of the Visual Arts Museum, “Testimony to War” will include examples of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and video representative of the artists’ distinctive bodies of work and of their uniquely personal vantage points of the war. Ranging from the subtly conceptual to the graphically raw, these works drive home the human costs of war as they bring us closer to the street-level reality of Iraq. The exhibition will be on view at the Visual Arts Museum, 209 East 23rd Street, New York City, from February 4 through March 8, 2008.
“The show is purposely apolitical but it is not neutral,” explains Francis Di Tommaso, “these works take aim at indifference. Every day we hear the news, but inevitably we become inured to it, and an ever widening disparity grows between our daily life and that of those involved in the conflict. The exhibition addresses this gap in engagement by presenting a selection of responses, expressed visually, from those who have lived a part of this war.”
“Testimony to War” encompasses a wide range of formal approaches, from powerful documentary interpretations to highly stylized, personal reflections. The works also suggest the varied possibilities for artistic response to war, from the realistic drawings of Steve Mumford made on site to Peter Buotte’s installation of target-shaped American flag magnets, evoking the number of US military deaths in Iraq and Aaron Hughes’ collaborative project with Ahmed Jabar Shareef, a nine-year old boy from Baghdad who was blinded and badly wounded in a firefight outside of his home. ”
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there is nothing like the art of the oppressor!
Hello from Iraq,
Thanks for posting the release about the TTW show
Peter Buotte