The art of war
Multi media exhibit makes its way back to North Dakota
Derek Scott, Sara Tezel
Issue date: 4/28/09 Section: Life
Few things seem more contradictory, yet tied together, than war and art. The North Dakota Museum of Art (NDMOA) finished its second Artists and War exhibit on Sunday. For those who managed to attend, the displays were both horrifying and oddly beautiful. For those who missed the exhibit, the following is a recap of a truly unique experience.
Guillermo Guardia was the artist responsible for the ceramic devils located upstairs at the NDMOA. Bound, beaten, bloody, baby Beelzebubs beg for their lives while armed beastly commando demons enact fighting gorilla hostility. These ceramic renditions were very well done, and their layout was equally creative. Often two commandos were depicted sneaking up on one other, wearing night vision goggles and wielding bazookas; it was hard not to be captivated. "The Playground" as it was called, really conveyed a message that war is nothing more then another game we play.
In the Jean Dean Holland room, artist Johanna Calle ditched traditional drawing tools for bits of metal wire pieced together depicting the pregnant little girls of Bogotá slums that are forced to play head of household. The medium was black wire on a white board, simple lines and wire mesh, but it still conveyed its message. Poor girls forced to hold their pieced together sheet metal slums together.
The room shared space with holographic tombstone epitaphs for NN (No Name) graves covering a wall. As you walk from one side to the other, the images change from flowery headstone depictions to morbid farewell inscriptions. Juan Manuel Echavarria's message was about damage the Columbian drug war has caused, to those persons who were left to die in rivers, left to be food for the vultures and for those persons who remained untraceable. Chaining the images together, the idea was to create abstract depictions for the connected burial vaults.
In next room, the Sandy Ryan Gallery, the compiled work of various people hung both on the walls and from the ceiling. White banners decorated with photographs of a dark forgotten moment in North Dakota's history moved with the breeze of passers by. That dirty little secret was the Snow Country Prison, an internment camp located in Fort Lincoln.
Guillermo Guardia was the artist responsible for the ceramic devils located upstairs at the NDMOA. Bound, beaten, bloody, baby Beelzebubs beg for their lives while armed beastly commando demons enact fighting gorilla hostility. These ceramic renditions were very well done, and their layout was equally creative. Often two commandos were depicted sneaking up on one other, wearing night vision goggles and wielding bazookas; it was hard not to be captivated. "The Playground" as it was called, really conveyed a message that war is nothing more then another game we play.
In the Jean Dean Holland room, artist Johanna Calle ditched traditional drawing tools for bits of metal wire pieced together depicting the pregnant little girls of Bogotá slums that are forced to play head of household. The medium was black wire on a white board, simple lines and wire mesh, but it still conveyed its message. Poor girls forced to hold their pieced together sheet metal slums together.
The room shared space with holographic tombstone epitaphs for NN (No Name) graves covering a wall. As you walk from one side to the other, the images change from flowery headstone depictions to morbid farewell inscriptions. Juan Manuel Echavarria's message was about damage the Columbian drug war has caused, to those persons who were left to die in rivers, left to be food for the vultures and for those persons who remained untraceable. Chaining the images together, the idea was to create abstract depictions for the connected burial vaults.
In next room, the Sandy Ryan Gallery, the compiled work of various people hung both on the walls and from the ceiling. White banners decorated with photographs of a dark forgotten moment in North Dakota's history moved with the breeze of passers by. That dirty little secret was the Snow Country Prison, an internment camp located in Fort Lincoln.
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