Is there a way for artists living outside war zones to talk about war and to appropriate war related imagery in their work without seeming adolescent, entitled and hopelessly naïve? War as metaphor is fraught with pitfalls. We are numb to over-use of political terms such as “war on terrorism”; “war on drugs”; and, “war on crime”. As consumers of mass media, we are equally numb to war’s more literal terminology: ‘Weapons of mass destruction’, ‘drone strikes’, ‘boots on the ground’, ‘Special Forces’, etc etc, the list of over-aggressive war wording goes on and on. Despite or perhaps because of the over-use of wartime rhetoric, until it happens to us, it all seems very far away.
Threat of war, however, creeps closer to home, partly due to todays’ same-time Internet reporting. Images of border conflicts and skirmishes are hastily uploaded to the Internet; escalating local acrimony instantaneously to near wartime international incident proportions. This rapid-fire social media reaction is increasingly the norm. Artists need not be physically present in a war zone to be psychically impacted by the constant barrage of wartime metaphors (arising from real time threats of military escalations) surrounding –and coloring - all that we do. Given the world we live in, it is no surprise that artists respond to war’s violence and threat of annihilation in their work.
In “War Room”, we offer examples of artists’ personal interactions and reinterpretations of war “threats” near and afar.
Participating artists: Chen Shaoxiong, John Clang, Kata Legrady, Liu Zheng, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Wang Luyan, Zhao Liang
