Exhibition: War and the Body

I was invited to include 3 of my Liberia portraits from The Human Rights Series in an exhibition called War and the Body in London. The exhibition explores the intertwining of war and the body through drawing, painting, photography, and installation work. Click here for the exhibition website. During the opening we (the artists) gave a brief talk and introduction about ourselves, our work and how it relates to the theme of the show before being part of a discussion forum on the topic of the exhibition. The artists were quite a diverse and an international crew. At least half of the artists were war veterans. One from Israel who served his duty in Palestine, One from the US who spent a year in Afghanistan, two from the UK. Others were from war countries (an Iraqi citizen) while others had gone into war zones (like myself) and documented. Two artists had photographed and filmed the catastrophic effects of cluster bombs on civilians in war zones. It became evident at one point, even before one of the members of the audience pointed it out, that not a single artist seemed to have made their particular art for a gallery or commercial audience. It was often as a means of therapy (most often for the war vets) or a means of searching for meaning in the chaos of war for the victims or artists themselves (as in my case). The war vets talked about how no one could really understand what they had gone through apart from another war vet. I spoke to two of the artists who had been soldiers after and each had expressed a complete inability to understand why the rest of us had gone into a war zone to document on our own accord. They thought that was a far greater thing. I couldn't get my head around them telling me that. These are my three pieces hanging in exhibition. Nigel couldn't make it because he is currently in Togo volunteering again on the Mercy Ship. Next year the ship sails to Sierra Leone and it would be great to be there and do another art project. Somehow being part of this show boosted me out of the slump of "what is art for" that I get caught in. It was so nice that not a single artist was aiming at furthering their career when they made the work, but just trying to make sense out of the chaos and tragedy of war.