IVAW members art work continues to spark dialog

Recently, the Intrusive Thoughts exhibition at the National Veterans Art Museum was featured in the Chicago Tribune in a two part article by Lori Waxman. The article demonstrates that the expression of IVAW members through the arts sparks dialog that can transform the viewers and break through the disconnect our society has with war. 

The words "I love you" cover its surface a dozen times over, and the person who becomes enmeshed in this humanizing message could be any viewer of art. Or that person could be the soldier-turned-artist who made it: Peter Sullivan, who spent 12 years in the Army National Guard, where it was his job to pretend to be an Iraqi at a mock training facility.

Since they (the wars) do take place so far away, how we understand these conflicts has a great deal to do with how they're pictured in our daily papers. Kyrie's been collecting and categorizing these images obsessively since his return home, and in his "Transfers of War" series he deconstructs them, subjecting them to a technical process that renders some nearly illegible. Visual collapse paradoxically portrays what the photographs themselves cannot — the confusion of conflict, the military's lack of transparency, the limits of journalistic coverage, the transformation of individuals into symbols.

Read the full articles here;

• War, in all its inhumanity and humanness 'Conflict Zone' focuses on photojournalists' gut-wrenchingimages May 26, 2011|By Lori Waxman, Special to the Tribune  Deconstructing war, showing contrast June 02, 2011|By Lori Waxman