The
exhibition opening will take place Thursday, June 20, at 7:00 p.m. in the
Herndon Gallery in South Hall on the Antioch College campus. Aaron Hughes,
artist and Iraq War veteran, will discuss the exhibit and his work during the
opening at 8:00 p.m. The exhibition will continue through August 16, 2013.
Co-curated
by Antioch College alumnae Dennie Eagleson ’71 and Lynn Zimmerman Estomin ’72, Coming Home will include recent work by
veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who work with Warrior Writers and
Combat Paper, two organizations that provide a safe space for veterans to
express their experience in war and returning home through creative writing and
visual art. The process also generates a
much-needed conversation between veterans and civilians regarding our
collective responsibilities and shared understanding of war.
Through Combat Paper papermaking workshops, veterans use
the uniforms they wore in service to create works of art. The uniforms are cut
up, weathered, and formed into sheets of paper. Participants use the
transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniforms as art and
express their experiences with the military.
Warrior Writers fosters artistic exploration and
expression through casual, welcoming workshops and retreats for veterans. Art
making becomes the creative tool through which veterans understand and
transcend experiences of trauma and emotional disruptions that are not easily
identified but constantly felt. Creative works are shared with the public in
the form of books, performances, and exhibitions. Using art as language,
Warrior Writers helps bridge the gap between veterans and civilians.
Coming Home will feature Aaron Hughes, Warrior Writer and Combat
Papermaker, as artist-in-residence, and Ash Kyrie, an Iraq War veteran and
sculptor. Hughes and Kyrie will be creating a site-specific installation
for the gallery that includes Kyrie’s work Palaver, which hopes to start
a dialog about how predator drone technology removes accountability from our
government and American citizens in the context of modern warfare.
Hughes’ work seeks out poetics and moments of
beauty, in order to construct new languages and meanings out of
personal and collective traumas. He uses these to create projects that attempt
to de-construct systems of dehumanization and oppression. Hughes
plans to create a space where visitors will ask questions about their relationship
to the world—a world that’s filled with dehumanization, war, and
destruction; a world that is filled with beauty, love, and humanity.
Veteran artists represented in
the exhibition are: Chantelle Bateman, Drew Cameron, Toby Hartbarger, Amy Herrera, Aaron
Hughes, Kevin
Kilgore, Ash
Kyrie, Iris Madelyn, Robynn Murray, Jennifer Pacanowski, John Turner, and Eli Wright.
Also
represented will be the Veterans Book Project, a project conceived by Monica
Haller to allow veterans to tell their story through writing and visual
art. The resulting artist books are
referred to as “Objects of Deployment.”
The
exhibition will also include three of Estomin’s multimedia collaborations with
veterans. The Warrior Writers website (www.warriorwriters.org) showcases
the creative writing and visual art of 40 veterans; Out of Step, a music/dance/video collaboration, features the voices
of four young female veterans; and a video collage of readings by veteran
writers created for this exhibition.
In
addition to the opening reception for the exhibition, Antioch College and the
Herndon Gallery will host a curatorial talk by Lynn Estomin on Friday, June 14,
at 8:00 p.m. On campus July 26 and 27,
Warrior Writers will offer two days of writing workshops and trainings for
veterans and local allies. There will be
a poetry reading by workshop participants on Saturday, July 27, at 7:30 p.m. in
the Herndon Gallery that is open and free to the public.
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