Exhibition: Conflict

Conflict                                                                                                                                               

Who are we without wars,

Wars are there for a reason.

Canada entered the War on Terror in fall 2001, the operation Enduring Freedom. It was a coalition of 37 countries under a United Nation’s mandate to change the fundamentalist regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan. So Afghanistan became the focus of a conflict where the west is set to prove its ideological supremacy, its democratic way of life. Here was a land half way around the world that no Canadian had ever knew, but it became essential to rescue.

In the ten years that will be marked as The Afghan War Canada had 156 deaths and hundreds wounded. Words such as Islam, fundamentalism, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, I.E.D, hearts and minds, and more became buzzwords in the lexicon of day-to-day life. Unexpected and strange, it was a clash of two cultures, two religions, two geographies, even two historical periods. How strange it might have felt for our troops the moments of contact. For many that did not return, the fallen soldiers, this was not a conventional Canadian ending, not the Canadian Dream.

Conflict is a body of work exploring the uncanny and painful affects of this war, of this clash of cultures. The Afghan War is the collision of two worlds: one with technologically advanced economy, high tech weaponry, super soldiers on high moral grounds, and a media-hype coverage that virtually brings the conflict in the populations’ living room. On the other side sits a war-torn, traditional, “backward” society, with an incomprehensible life style, extreme faith, extreme poverty, deeply religious, pure but real, a segregated society that makes man divine, sees woman as sin, progress as evil, and arts satanic.

As the conflict drags on, there is no ultimate victory. The media loses interest and bored it moves on, people move on. The Afghan war becomes a conflict fought in an imaginary far away land.

And then how sad, empty, and unreal it feels when the news of a soldier killed, randomly and without a cause by an improvised explosive device is announced. For a society that cherishes life and always tries to make sense of individual loss, finding answers to anything, it is baffling, almost shocking. Why him? There was no battle, no heroic hand-to-hand combat, just a routine everyday drive on a what ever street, in a where ever village, ending deadly, a life with incredible potential ends. (And I feel it). He was my friend, my neighbor, or just a guy in the subway that I chatted yesterday. The absurdity of the death is senseless, is profound, distant.  The super ideology does not make sense anymore.

Conflict is an expression of the clash of cultures. Relying on the tradition of war etchings and the world of symbolism, it brings to the front the poetics of war. Dark lines and colourful surfaces create an intimate while painfully distanced sense of the moments, of life and death, of beliefs and struggles. Conflict is to make sense of the fight for a cause despite the sacrifice of a glorious life. It is homage to sentiments of patriotism and hope, a tribute to the fallen.

   Afshin Matlabi   2011