Just a group school photo, but..
21 x 30 inches
Pastel on Japanese paper.
In elementary schools all over Iraq, drawing contests were held. Children were
challenged to draw Israeli crimes, American collaboration, or Gulf Arab silence. I got
to know about the world through the language of these political cartoons. The
American global hegemony wore a cowboy hat and held a gasoline hose. Our national
resources was a milk cow. The well worn faces of political leaders. During sanctions,
when we could not get satelite, these caricatures were my introduction to the world.
During the invasion, our village telecom center was hit by Coalition Forces. It was
two in the morning. Our house shook. I woke up and screamed, we were hit!. Soon
enough, our president was American and my parents were paid in dollars. All the
children were given bags with American flags.
My elementary school “babel’ was next to the bombed telecom center. The next time
we took our class photo, the wall behind us had developed a crack. That crack
swallowed all the political drawings, until nothing remained of them. They were
among the first casualties of the new era. It was the worst class photo: a mother tried
her best to get her son to smile and a student kept annoying me by twisting my ear.
How often did I wish I could crawl into pictorial space to escape, while the pain and
pictures crawled into me and remain to this very day
Look, I sincerely hope that you never have to experience the senseless and
international ordeals of wars, the catastrophe of those experiences. This sort of
knowlege is torture. Art can’t heal. It can only avoid the pain, but it creates it’s own
pain. Perhaps that is why I created alternative heads, for alternative pain on the
paint. Those pale memories invade you without permission, they come when you are
with your loved one, as you sit looking out of a speeding train window. I wish for all
of your lives to be peaceful and filled with what you love. The art sometimes it’s not
enough.
INSTALLATION IMAGES:
Photography: All images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Sara’s, New York