Torture as Inspiration

When I first saw the heart-wrenching photograph of an Iraqi father and son, which was taken shortly after the invasion (2003) at a U.S. detention center, I simply stopped and covered my mouth.

As a new mother, my child was about the same age as this little boy who was lying in the dust behind loops of barbed wire and was embraced by his father, who's head was hooded in suffocating black plastic fabric. It was awful.

It was taken four years ago, and since then, every time I caught a glimpse of the photograph, it moved me to tears. Clearly the photograph moved many others who viewed it, and it won the World Press Photo Award in 2004 (photographer Jean-Marc Bouju). But I wondered: Did anyone ever help this father and son? I read about another Iraqi father who had gone voluntarily to a U.S. detention center to look for his two missing sons and died, after being seized, brutally beaten and stuffed into a sleeping bag where he suffocated to death.

Bouju's photograph had inspired me to think about our obligation as citizens of the free world, and myself as an artist, to strike out with vision against the imagery and reality of blindness that we are all facing.

My new artwork, the "Fabrication of Blindness," has enabled me to explore my own sense of blindness, remorse, guilt and powerlessness related to the occupation of Iraq. Today, I have completed my installation of this work-in-progress. As an admirer of the Huffington Post, I want to share my artwork with those of you who are also inspired to create change.

I have created a dark cloud by hanging 385 hoods, the number of detainees currently held in Guantanamo Bay. The cloud is so large that it blocks out the natural light in the room. Next week, my first audiences are invited to take a look. I consider the installation a performance, although I expect people will ask, 'Where are the performers?' I would answer that the performers are represented by the hoods, which I've hung on thick ropes in the air. The fabric moves slightly with the wind through the studio.

I think of these hoods as a group of witnesses, looking down at us with Jumah al Dossari's (a detainee since 2001) request, "Take the remnants of my body...Send them to the world, to the judges and to the people of conscience...And let them bear the guilty burden before the world of this innocent soul..." (Al Dossari has tried to kill himself 12 times during his detention and wrote a moving poem, from which the excerpt comes. Lawyer Mark Falkoff will soon publish a book of his and other detainees' writings).

We are, I believe, as Susan Sontag wrote, "guilty if we were able to do something [to prevent the suffering of another] and did nothing." Indeed, the endless detention and torture of hundreds of civilians is something for all U.S. citizens to face. We must ask ourselves, "will we act now to stop this?"

Today, we continue to endure an administration, which clouds our access to information and our ability to express broad dissent. Guantanamo Bay detention facility has been called the 'Cancer on our Democracy'* and will have dire consequences in our future. Today, many of the 385 detainees in Cuba have been there for more than four years, with little end in sight. I have read reports of juveniles as young as 11 also held there. (*term from Minister Justin Osterman, the only clergyman to visit these detainees inside and face-to-face.)

An invitation by Mikhail Baryshnikov to develop this new project in his glorious 6th floor studio, which has giant windows with views of the expansive western sky, has given me a context to bring the Fabrication of Blindness to life. And to inspire us all with a view and feeling of torture as inspiration to act.

I hope we will all cast off our hoods and blinders and send them back to an administration, which has been so successful in making us all feel powerless and alienated.

I have come to believe that it might only be when we feel the painful reality of what our country has caused -- and stay with it, not turn a blind eye -- that we will be inspired to truly act and change course.

I believe that art can play an instigating role.

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Location of Performance:
Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC
450 W. 37th Street (between 9 and 10 Ave)
6th Floor
On View
Thursday 26 July between 12-4pm & 6-8pm
Saturday 28 July between 12-4pm

For more information, visit Julia Mandle's site.