Hand to Hand

6 gloves using broken branches, twisted wire, dressmaker pins, permanent marker pen, fabric, textile trim – 2008
 
A mixed media installation using gloves as support for various symbolic materials to document one week of the Iraq war.

April 28 – May 3, 2008
Flora Rosefsky

 The “Green Zone” in Sadr City, where the supposedly secure  American Embassy and various Iraqi government buildings are located, becomes vulnerable this week when the war’s “signature weapon”, the roadside bomb, continues to kill and injure American servicemen as well as innocent Iraqi civilians and children.   Modern body armor may reduce actual death, but survival comes at a steep cost with the loss of limbs. The fragments of textiles and trims, twisted wire, along with broken tree branches reminiscent of limbs, trunks and stubs reflect the fragility of what is considered to be a safe sanctuary within Sadr City.

(excerpt from The Spruill Center for The Arts postcard announcement of the March 7-April 28, 2008 Hand to Hand Exhibition.)

“Since March 2003, when the war in Iraq began, I started a series of paintings in response to the war.  I chose as my material simple cotton gloves and painted a news story about the war directly on them almost every day. Each glove is a ‘rosary’ bead in a daily witnessing. In 2006, I expanded the project to include over 100 artists as a continuing community dialog.” – Cecilia Kane, Exhibition Curator