The Apartment
Projects
Afghan War Rugs.
As a supplement to our current round of politically motivated exhibitions and to “celebrate” George Washington’s birthday, The Apartment is proud to present a one-day exhibition of Afghan War Rugs from the collection of Laing and Kathleen Brown. This temporary exhibition will take place Sunday, February 22nd from 2–6pm. These provocative and finely crafted Afghan rugs are material representations of the violent physical reality that Afghan people have experienced throughout three decades of international and internal wars.
Since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Turkmen have woven “war rugs” that depict the machines of war. This picturing of the physical realities of battle has continued to this day. Recent rugs detail the weapons brought for combat in Afghanistan by the Soviets and Americans, artisans replacing the traditional depictions of flora and fauna with motifs of grenades, helicopters and parades of tanks. Many rearticulate images from the US propaganda brought to the region, most of which was literally dropped from the skies as pamphlets, including familiar pictures of 9/11 with the planes hurtling into the twin towers. Often the weaver will include a dove with olive branch in beak to fly over the patterned flags of the warring nations and land-maps of the afflicted areas.
These rugs, principally woven by women of the Turkman culture also include English phrases such as “Hand Bom [Bomb],” “Rooket [Rocket]” and “Made in Afghanistan.” The first war rugs were essentially ‘hidden’ and meant for fellow Afghanis, according to Hanifa Tokhi, an Afghan immigrant who fled Kabul after the Soviet invasion. “Later on, they made it commercialized when they found out that people were interested,” she says. “But at the beginning, it was to show their hatred of the invasion. I know the Afghan people, and this was their way to fight.“1 This essentially folk practice uses a 2500 year-old weaving tradition to express regional condition and sentiment – reflecting a contemporary moment by means of an ancient art form.
We are very happy to provide an opportunity for a public viewing of these astonishing textiles.
At this time we would also like to acknowledge the enduring presence of the text work by Lawrence Weiner, As Long As It Lasts. This public work was installed in January of 2008 at The Apartment to remain on exhibition until the end of the foreign occupation of Iraq. This gesture was to remind us of what in contemporary Canadian society we have not experienced, an occupation by a foreign force. This installation was also aimed to combat the cultural amnesia that has emerged after an initial frenzy of discourse through artist works and exhibitions, which have mostly abated even though the situation has not. The work has been a constant reminder to us of the startling invasive conditions of occupation.
As American media has become consumed in the last year with the US political aspirations and the unravelling collapse of the financial system due to massive speculation and profiteering, the attention of the public has drifted away from the ongoing money and lives being spent on the foreign intervention in this region. We at The Apartment, perhaps naively, are optimistic that there will be a shift from military to development spending, specifically towards renewable energy, and that this will eventually change foreign interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. Until then we are reminded by this resonate text work of the constant violence and poverty that we barely glimpse from our North American living rooms.
