Artist's Statement: R&R (. . . &R)

Abstract

Artist's Statement:R&R (. . . &R) Susanne Slavick (bio) Responding to the ongoing disasters of war and the policies and conditions that lead to them, artists can condone or condemn. The challenge lies in finding a constructive stance, especially when confronting the aftermath of each war. Decimated and displaced peoples, ruined infrastructures and scorched earth follow each armed conflict. How can a place or people cohere after trauma and calamity? These works from the R&R ( . . . &R) series counter art-historical and contemporary media representations of war with interventions both remorseful and restorative. The series' title converts the military abbreviation for "rest and relaxation" to words like "regret and restitution." In face of perpetual carnage I cull images of regeneration from the art and architecture of the invader and the invaded. Referring to scenes of construction and cultivation from the workshops of Persian miniaturist Bihzâd to the court arts of Safavid Iran, I paint images of resurgence over scenes of devastation across Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East. Sources for these scenes are "documentary" photographs found on the Internet—from military and news media sites, FLICKR and Webshots, and blogs by soldiers and others in the midst of war. Recognizing and reconstituting what has been decimated, my palette begins to revive and replace the anonymous and ashen monochrome of rubble. Creativity is one measure of our seemingly miraculous recovery from incomprehensible and self-inflicted destruction. R&R ( . . . &R) embodies one artist's response as witness, critic, and agent of empathic unsettlement.1 Art is basically a generative force. Creativity is inherently iterative and redemptive. These gestures of debt and discovery are my attempts at renewal among the rubble and undoing some of the damage. Confronting and considering the cultural heritage of peoples and places under attack reminds us of what we stand to lose—the humanity of those we are urged to revile and [End Page 93] the humanity of those we revere. Ignoring this would leave us with no culture at all. Susanne Slavick susanne slavick is an artist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon. She graduated from Yale University, subsequently studied at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and earned her MFA at the Tyler School of Art in Rome and Philadelphia. Recent works have traveled to the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the McDonough Museum of Art in Ohio. Her book Out of Rubble, featuring over thirty international artists who respond to the aftermath of war, was published in 2011. Note 1. Dominick La Capra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 41. [End Page 94] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Heaven's Gate, 2009, gouache on archival digital print/Hahnemühle paper, 14 x 12 in. The clouds above a charred automobile in Baghdad are derived from a Persian battle scene illustration with the hero Faramurz scattering the troops of the king of Kabul. The persistence and futility of violence across nations and empires are reiterated in the blasted-out windows and doors that open to a bleached void. Is it the blinding light of paradise, the motive for so much "martyrdom," or nothing but a dead end? [End Page 95] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Rocking Horse, 2010, gouache on archival digital print/Hahnemühle paper, 12 x 13.5 in. A horseman derived from a sixteenth-century painting by Qadimi is mounted above the wreckage in a southern Iraqi landscape, suggesting how we continue to treat war as a game, from cradle to grave. [End Page 96] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 3. Restore (Sarafiya Star over the Tigris), 2006, gouache on archival digital print/ Hahnemühle paper, 6 x 8.125 in. A thirteenth- or fourteenth-century Iranian tile design spans the gap of Baghdad's al-Sarafiya Bridge that was destroyed by a truck bomb in 2007. Pairing the elegant decorative geometry of Islamic design with the contemporary geometry of engineering points to the choices we make, how we direct our expertise and ingenuity. [End Page 97] Click for...