Balkan conflict resonates in look at war through art Final Edition

• Published in: The Vancouver sun (1986)
• Main Author: Michael Scott, Sun Art Critic
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vancouver, B.C Postmedia Network Inc 24.04.1999
• ISSN: 0832-1299

The first segment of War Zones is subtitled Siting Conflict, and is comprised of artwork that looks at war in relation to geographic place. Genocide in Rwanda, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, ruthless banditry in Somalia -- our understanding of current events is often fused to the abstract notion of the places where they unfold. We've never been to Kigali or Mogadishu, but we can imagine what they're like because we've seen them on television. Or can we? The five works in Siting Conflict turn their gimlet eyes on the role of the media in encapsulating war and rendering it palatable for suppertime audiences. Martha Rosler, who came to prominence during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, was a pioneer in examining the media's role in shaping our understanding of war. Her House Beautiful photo- montages are brutal reminders -- even 30 years later -- of how obscenely ironic it is that we watch wars unfold from the comfort of our suburban family rooms. Rosler took images of stylish house interiors and littered them with the images of war: American GIs prowling a glamorous new kitchen looking for land mines; a Vietnamese woman crumpled in death on the floor of a slip-covered living room; or a burned-over landscape glimpsed through a sunroom's charming window treatment. What [Alfredo Jaar] is offering in Field, Road, Cloud is a souvenir of a Sunday-morning massacre in the summer of 1994, in which 400 people were hacked to death by a Hutu death squad that came upon them during mass. One frightened survivor, Gutete Emerita, has become a tragic touchstone in Jaar's work. Emerita watched her husband and two sons murdered but managed to escape with her 12-year-old daughter. "I remember her eyes," Jaar writes. "The eyes of Gutete Emerita."