2007
The New American Century Project - Chapter 7 DU Babies - Artist Statement |
In this suite of seven mixed media florescent drawings, Anderson exposes and explores the brutal and grim effects that Depleted Uranium has on the developing foetus through the subsequent physical manifestations in the children born of Iraqis who have been exposed to the radiation of current high tech warfare. Illuminated under black lights, these images radiate the eerie glow that is the hallmark of The New American Century Project installations, an allusion to the radiation as well as the computer screen where the images were appropriated from the Internet. Not typical of traditional War Art and under the radar in the public mind, this issue brings the reality that Nuclear Warfare is being conducted by any country using Depleted Uranium ordinance. Used to harden the tips of high calibre munitions and smart bombs, Depleted Uranium is pulverized on impact and contaminates the air and area around the impact sites. Canada has these munitions in its arsenal, like the United States and Britain. Since the first Gulf War thousands of Iraqi citizens, as well as Coalition and UN troops, have been exposed to the radiation left behind following bombardments, strafing, and fire fights, and unknown numbers of infants are being born deformed in war zones and back home when troops return contaminated. |
Canaries in the DU Mine When one looks at Tobey C. Anderson's babies, it is difficult to avoid cringing and asking "why?" Why would anyone in his right mind develop such images of malformed babies? Even when you know that these 'unnatural' offspring represent the collateral and unintended consequence of American weapons that use depleted uranium to harden bullets, missiles, tanks—even then, the twisted, contorted, distorted shapes, the missing limbs, the spilled and exposed soft guts and brains, the riddled and wrinkled and absent texture of skin leave me asking whether we deserve such an assault upon our senses and expectations. And indeed the inked drawings, the charcoal smudging, the glowing pink, yellow and green florescent acrylic, and the dark light seem calculated (like Anderson's New American Century series) to elicit a ghostly and disturbing sense of the more than real or surreal. To my mind, the war babies float in an unreal atmosphere without horizon, foreground or background. They stand out like unnamed, unaccounted for, unaccountable things against no context. One of them with heavy outline and twisted geometric shape, turned around upon itself, reminds me of an esoteric Haida icon. Yet, as a grouping, the babies seem an indictment against ourselves, the uninvolved and removed and unseeing spectators. Moreover they surely expose the detached perspective, the failure of imagination, that 'fathers' and 'mothers' such unintended results. War leads to this? Can one speak of winning such a war? Of course, for satire to work, there must be an agreed upon norm or measure. Satiric distortion depends upon some common sense of what is right or good. In Anderson's case, however, one does not feel confronted by distortion or exaggeration but by a careful, factual almost clinical examination of carnival specimens. (Does he as artist suffer from the same disease of detachment that gave rise to DU munitions?) Yet even here in this chamber of horrors, one is surely made to assume that helpless newborns must be cared for, sustained, nurtured. And the world itself must be arranged in such a way that children can live with the possibility of joy. Consider William Blake's lyrics in his Songs of Innocence (1794) which celebrate the natural joy of the newborn child and the natural responsiveness of the caring adult: Infant Joy "I have no name: Pretty Joy! In Blake’s lyrical dialogue, the adult gives and wishes the newborn child the name and reality of "Joy." In Anderson's painted world, such a simple response seems impossible. How can we return joy to such children as these? In our technocratic and abstracted world of war, children become merely unintended, collateral damage, and the damage becomes as close to us as the mutated genes of these unfortunate children and their parents. But Anderson like Blake realizes that the even more basic damage is that of the rational mind that coldly overlooks and fails to imagine our basic human vulnerability. Anderson's babies represent surely the canary in the mine. They warn us of minds now unmindful and thus a threat to life itself. R. Douglas MacDonald The artist gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council - Mid Career Artist and Materials Assistance Grant Programmes
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