Photos of the installation    

     Closeups of the paintings

                                                               

                                                                                                             Tom Dorsey, the Salina Journal

The following paragraphs describe what visitors to Unfinished Portrait have seen

The invasion and occupation of Iraq have produced many terrible statistics – statistics that have been used to argue both for and against continuing the occupation. With Unfinished Portrait I have attempted to reinterpret some of the most closely watched statistics – the death tolls – in a way that places us face-to-face with the war’s victims. Seeing not the numbers of dead but the people themselves will, I hope, prompt us to think very differently about the human suffering to which the Iraq invasion has led.

In paying our respects to those killed, it is possible for us to look into the faces of most of the American troops, and here you see images of the first 3000 to die. Almost 1000 more have joined them in death since. They are victims of a war that never should have been, and their ranks continue to grow. I have left the twenty-fifth and final panel unfinished, to emphasize that this will always be a work in progress – that once wartime killing begins, it carries on in myriad ways, long after the original mission is accomplished.

No one knows precisely how many of the people of Iraq have died because of this war, and their faces are for the most part known only to their families and friends. The walls, ceiling, and columns in the 45' x 35' room are painted black to represent their loss. If we knew their faces, and if we were to cover all of the black surfaces with individual portraits the size of those in the painting, this room would hold almost 375,000 portraits. Between the lower and upper estimates of Iraq’s dead (as published in academic studies), 375,000 is closer to the lower ones. Yet to cover this entire black area in portraits like those in the painting, at a similar pace, would occupy the entire careers of six artists.

The floor is covered with a thick layer of sand, where the footprints made by the viewer become part of the installation. Nothing in the room - neither the faces nor the black walls nor the footprints represents any of the forces embroiled in the battle for control of Iraq; there are no enemies or allies in this room, only victims.

The music you hear is “Mecca”, written and performed by Indian artist Sheila Chandra. The lyrics are in Urdu; the chorus translates as follows:

At this moment we are in a sea of sentiment,
And there is no shore in sight.