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editorial contributions
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I make drawings as a response to contemporary images of both military power and its effects on military and civilian populations. Overwhelmed by the number of recent media images representing the horrors of war—as well as those that attempt to justify it—my drawings are an attempt to understand the contradictory responses of fear, apprehension, complicity, and misgiving that these current circumstances can evoke.
As someone who has never witnessed combat or its aftermath firsthand, my conception of warfare in general is shaped by media images, which seem to materialize out of thin air with a disturbing regularity and anonymity. I draw in order to transform this barrage of images into a more singular and contemplative experience: one that is more evocative of the complex and entrenched system of thought that continually pits “us” against “them.”
Tiny soldiers, meticulously rendered in graphite, march endlessly along vast sheets of white paper, emerging from and disappearing back into the emptiness of an ever-changing frontier. Devastated landscapes hover as though in a vacuum. Anonymous troops patrol invisible and arbitrary borders; a soldier pauses, attempting to assess the location of an unknown and invisible enemy. An alternating rhythm of movement and stasis echoes through the seemingly empty landscape, with troops, prisoners and refugees continuously shifting position.
Many of my drawings are based initially on photographs downloaded from the US Army’s website, which have been provided for the use of the news media. This digitally mediated type of witnessing, in which images are both omnipresent and ultimately impossible to trust, is a quintessentially modern phenomenon that is engineered to satisfy shorter attention spans and surface-oriented viewership. Unlike Goya or Delacroix, I am witnessing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at a distance, and the images that flash across the electronic media seem to demand a more contemplative response. The process of drawing requires extended concentration: a slow, focused and precise recording of ambiguities and contradictions. It is the antithesis of the fragmented consciousness fostered by sound bytes and news tickers. The act of viewing a drawing echoes and multiplies this concentrated experience, creating a situation in which the viewer must pause and contemplate the subject with more than just a passing glance.
While much of my source material comes from propagandistic sources, I purposefully look for those images in which the actions depicted are ambiguous and unsettling, showing the psychological tension and anxiety of the moments between and after the battle. By removing specific figures and fragments of landscape from their original context, and joining them together in vast fields of white paper, they become representative moments within the global system of warfare and occupation that regrettably remains a part of the larger human condition.
Biographical information
Megan Vossler |
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