Fine Art:
WHAT WE SAY GOES
MEDIUM AND DIMENSIONS
Chromite[1] and builders sand on board
172 × 225 cm
CONCEPTUAL STATEMENT
This work’s dimensions reference those of Verhaecht’s The Tower of Babel (1602 – 1610). Allegorically, the Tower has come to represent human arrogance and the cost of ambition. Biblically, it marks a locus of mass displacement, as a result of people becoming incapable of understanding their neighbours.
The statement “what we say goes”[1] rendered here in calligraphic Arabic, is one made by former American president George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War in Iraq, at whose ancient city of Nimrud[2] many Biblical scholars believe the Tower was situated.
Following his son’s orchestration of the conflict’s sequel in 2003, the rapid withdrawal of American troops between 2009 - 2011 created a vacuum which was quickly filled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The resultant brutality and human rights abuses inflicted upon the population have few parallels in recorded history.
Whilst Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared in December 2017 that ISIL has officially been defeated in the region, its resurgence is all but guaranteed. In the interim, the United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that no fewer than 2.14 million Iraqi people remain internally displaced.
Current U.S President Donald Trump’s position on affording asylum to these families living in a bewildering misery which his country helped create is the stuff of nightmares.
This piece tries to investigate both the conceit of power, and the legacies of uncertainty it can construct.
[1] Used principally in steel foundries, chromite is notable for its ability to withstand tremendous heat. Arguably, these refractory material properties find characteristic equivalence in both militant fundamentalist ideologies and imperialist attitudes alike.[1] In contrast to the staggering hubris which the statement demonstrates, the sentence can also imply the literal disappearance of the very authority it initially asserts, depending on the stresses applied in its English pronunciation.
[2] In contrast to the staggering hubris which the statement demonstrates, the sentence can also imply the literal disappearance of the very authority it initially asserts, depending on the stresses applied in its English pronunciation.
[2] Nimrud was obliterated by ISIL in 2015.
