War at a Distance: Faraway, So Close
Louie Palu From the series Zhari-Panjwai: Dispatches from Afghanistan 2007
This month marks eight years of Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan. For those removed from its landscapes, the conflict exists within the narrow scope of statistics and images from the news: images that offer fragments of larger narratives and, at best, only a relational proximity. The group exhibition “War at a Distance” mediates the limits of this representation. Portraits by American photographer Suzanne Opton and prints by front-line photojournalist Louie Palu offer viewers two different sorts of encounters. The belated poignancy of Opton’s project contrasts with Palu’s combat images—and the fact that both are juxtaposed with sounds of war summons a sense of immediacy and disorientation.
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Suzanne Opton Soldier: Kubalewski - 366 Days in Iraq, Citizen: Bassim Sulaiman - Antiques Dealer, Father of Two from the series Citizen + Soldier 2009 |
At the other end of the spectrum, Allyson Mitchell’s video Afghanimation is a sharp critique of the nexus between media and nationalistic propaganda (with a nod to Joyce Wieland in its tongue-in-cheek use of domestic textile as political metaphor). Stephen Andrews’ image of a burning Afghani man—beautifully rendered—pointedly plays off “raw” footage shot by Canadian soldiers on YouTube, while the visual spectacle of war is underscored in Francesco Simeti’s Watching War, which recontextualizes media images in a repetitive wallpaper motif. The net effect is a show that relives war’s horror at the ambiguous but charged distance from which we see it. (56 Ossington Ave, Toronto ON)
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Allyson Mitchell Afghanimation 2008 Video still |
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Francesco Simeti Watching the War 2002 Installation detail |
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