"Glossy Idealism on the Front Lines" (NYT article on Martha Rosler)

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/arts/design/07kino.html



Invasion (2008)



Point and Shoot (2008)

The photomontages in this show, all made this year, differ in that they are large, vibrantly colored, digitally printed and hung in a commercial gallery. In them Ms. Rosler often collages Americans onto scenes from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In “Point and Shoot” a glamorous bride poses on a Baghdad street, holding an old Polaroid camera, while troops behind her train their guns on civilians. “Invasion” shows a tank flanked by an army of men in identical black suits. In “The Gray Drape” a woman triumphantly lifts a cloth from a picture window, as if unveiling a public monument, to reveal a fiery battleground.

Initially Ms. Rosler felt some trepidation about reviving the project. “The downside was that people could say, ‘She’s revisiting something she did 30 years ago,’ ” she said. “But I thought that actually was a plus, because I wanted to make the point that with all the differences, this is exactly the same scenario. We haven’t advanced at all in the way we go to war.”

. . .

“I’m mindful of the fact that the gallery is a commodity exchange system,” Ms. Rosler said. “But my practice reaches in so many different ways outside the art world that I don’t feel bad about that.” Besides, she added, “I realized that if I made political work that was shown in galleries, it would wind up in mass newspapers and magazines. And it did.”

[swag]

1. Download "Screen Saver for Time of War"

http://tcpl.org/exhibits/unnamablename/screensaver.html