Some years ago under the auspices of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Afghanistan, an art teacher from the UK lectured bewildered Afghan women on a conceptual artwork by Marcel Duchamp… a porcelain urinal he titled “Fountain.” The foundation was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The scene was captured in “Bitter Lake,” a documentary film about Afghanistan…
I created the silkscreen print No Más Guerra (No More War) in 1983. It was a statement against the wars then raging in Central America and around the globe during the Cold War, including the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Later, in the 2000s, I distributed the poster at antiwar protests against the US war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now unbelievably,…
Imagine being an artist in a country that banned art. Furthermore, to save yourself and your family, you had to burn all of your paintings before the theocratic zealots of the unelected “government” could discover them. “My heart shatters to see and talk to Afghan artists who have started destroying their own art out of fear. Afghanistan is becoming black…
With its M16 Art Project, the “peace activist” organization Peace One Day, asked 14 contemporary artists “to use decommissioned M16 assault rifles to produce artwork, thereby continuing the story of taking objects of war and using them in support of peace.” The M16 Art Project is the companion exhibition to the earlier AKA Peace exhibit mounted by Peace One Day…
“Who needs art when we have perpetual war?” is a question that would be asked by a general who runs a garrison state. “What is art when we have perpetual war?” is a question that could only be asked by an artist. I am an artist who believes that art reflects social realities, whether consciously or unconsciously, and that social…
The 2012 exhibition AKA Peace was a primary example of the limitations of much of the so-called “political art” in our current period. Curated by U.K. artist Jake Chapman, the show was held at The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, England, from Sept. 25 to Sept. 30, 2012. The intent of the exhibit was to give decommissioned AK-47 rifles…
My painting, Libros No Bombas (Books Not Bombs), was one of two canvases I premiered at the exhibition, ¡ADELANTE! Mexican American Artists: 1960s and Beyond, which took place at the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale, California from September 9, 2011 through January 1, 2012. The painting is available as a 6″ x 11″ inch full-color postcard reproduction (pictured above); the…
In 1983 a poster appeared on walls all across Soviet occupied Afghanistan. The print featured a tough Soviet Red Army soldier kneeling in the snow, smashing his Kalashnikov automatic rifle over his knee while roaring – “The war is finished! Let’s go home!” I thought of that poster when President Obama announced on Dec. 16, 2010 that there was “significant…
