The artists gathered in this room take up visual forms that have been traditionally deployed in the commemoration of war, from history painting to memorials and memorabilia. Their artworks destabilize such monuments, with their accompanying narratives of heroism and victory, and instead lay bare the culture of perpetual violence that defines our present. Through enigmatic mark-making, layering, and assemblage, these artists bring into startling focus the charged intersections between the subject, the state, and social memory. Throughout the gallery, they use the human figure as a register of the historical legacies and everyday experiences of war: bodies are fragmented, reassembled into uncanny formations and hybrid beings, or rendered hauntingly absent. As artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has stated, drawing on his childhood in the ruins of World War II, “I do not remember the war, but war remembers me.”
Organized by Rattanamol Singh Johal, Assistant Director, International Program, and Sophie Cavoulacos, Associate Curator, Department of Film, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs.
