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November 30, 2005

War Rugs

Justin Sirois

[Ed note: Please excuse the previous mis-edited version that appeared early Wednesday (11/30). We gotz our shit straight now!]

Apparently I’m Johnny come lately to the war rug scene, but when it comes to “global” folk art scenes one might have a little leeway, say, you might need a few decades to get hip to something because the damn hub is halfway around the world in a place where you’d get shot for being who you are. American. Ouch. Late this summer I was walking around Baltimore with my girlfriend and we stumbled upon a small Persian rug store, a shop tucked away in the older waterfront district known as Fells Point. It took a few minutes for us to spot a small, 2 x 3 foot rug hanging among the typical larger weaves. On it, a little map of Afghanistan stood out, surrounded by tanks, helicopters, RPGs and crudely drawn Kalashnikovs. Befuddled, I asked what they were and the sales person had little to offer. We left. Came back an hour later. Visa. Instant obsession.

A little internet research turned up some enlightening information: The women of nomadic tribes in Afghanistan have been weaving for centuries, the oldest known rugs dating back to the 4th century B.C. Large area rugs typically do not depict images, they are crammed with decorative shapes and intertwining pattern. Smaller rugs sometimes have figurative illustrations. These pieces show everyday things, animals, townspeople, villages and landscape in brilliant vegetable dyed hues. Serene images of camels grazing in sandy landscapes, mosques stand on brightly colored fields. In the year that I was born (‘79), all of that changed. The soviet invaded Afghanistan and the war altered everyone’s life forever.

We got Rambo 3 and they got a decade of brutal fighting. In the end, Russia pulled out and admitted they had invaded. Afghanistan, the poorest country in the world, struggled to survive.

When the Soviets retreated and harsh Muslim Sharia law became adopted, women were no longer allowed to work outside the home. They were to have no outside acquaintances, could only speak to their husbands and children, and, hidden under burkas, were stripped of their individualism and economic independence. Further, Sharia law forbid images of animate objects in art. Birds, horses, and even people disappeared from their beautiful rugs.

As a result, women began rendering small rugs in the themes of their new hostile, militant environment.

The earliest examples look much like pre war rugs and the insurgence of military imagery is subtle. Multicolored towers (Mosques) are surrounded by geometric patterns and richly dyed medallions are housed by crisscrossing diamonds, but a closer inspection reveals bombers and helicopters hovering above their colorful roofs. Some prayer rugs have rows if munitions along their margins, tiny pointed bullets aimed at the knees of the occupant. Stylized tanks blend into abstraction, jeeps rove around poppy fields.

Smaller rugs seem to have the most obvious weaponry. Inside a bullet border, symmetrical rugs show grenades and Kalashnikovs (Russian AK47s) on radiating red backgrounds. These longer, vertical rugs tend to be the most psychedelic, neon tanks and flatly woven planes sit around large pink and green rocket launchers, maroon helicopters with USSR painted on their sides fill the crowded composition. It’s clear that this imagery took its time infiltrating: weavers tested out subject matter to see what would work and what men (the market) would tolerate. It is possible that the larger rugs, because they take more time, will have to least amount of weaponry, making them more attractive in the commercial marketplace.

Some of the must intriguing rugs tell stories. I bought this piece from a dealer in Pakistan via Ebay and had to reluctantly open a paypal account to get the goods. It arrived in a DHL bag with the handwritten words “women’s handbag, GIFT” scrawled on it. F customs. This rug was probably created during the nine year (‘79 – ‘88) Soviet war or before the Taliban’s Sharia law strictly forbade humans and animals in art.

What we see here is a large Soviet invader with a hammer and sickle on his forehead and a giant hand coming down from the sky. He towers above Afghanistan as well as the common people. Is the hammer and sickle (hand) massaging evil ideals into the man’s head? Is it a puppet metaphor? Afghan freedom fighters surround him, probably with US bought arms (catch phrase of ’01 “blowback”). Four of them aim and charge, small tanks provide support. A large bomb and jet fighters litter the top of the rug, marked with the enemy’s red nomenclature. There are traditional images as well, men, camels and oxen, at the bottom of the congested composition (Pakistani?), watching the fight. Heavily stylized, the geometric figures resemble hieroglyphic carving with fragmentation grenades carefully lobbed at their heels.

One of the most notable differences in these pieces is the symmetry has been abandoned; the functional medium of “rug” has turned into the free expressive “canvas”. Women, silenced by either sexually discriminating law or foreign invading rifles have transformed tradition into expressive resistance. Are these pieces intended to be prayer rugs or are they just smaller because of their content? Either way, when you kneel to pray these issues will stare you in the face.

It is unclear which pieces were woven in the period of Taliban rule between ’88 and 2001. It’s safe to assume most or all rugs excluded animate objects and the underground art movement of these shadowed women hibernated for over a decade. War rugs were still made, but probably in the more traditional styles of Afghanistan. Crazy Shit was about to happen though.

(insert Crazy Shit a la ((Allah)) terror attack on NYC)

With the invasion of US forces in 2001, shortly after September 11th, new themes emerged. Giant communists disappeared and smart bombs and bunker busters rain down from high. These smaller rugs have common themes and copied motifs: text (both English and Arabic) have been copiously added. These two rugs, bought from separate dealers (Texas / Miami) show almost the exact same composition and imagery by two different artists. With a map of Afghanistan in the center, the wool canvas has been filled with invading Bradley tanks and hovering Apaches. Arabic (or Farsi?) script at the top reads “The army of the Taliban is leaving Afghanistan”. Northern Alliance and US vehicles roll down (from the North) to bring the battle straight into Kandahar, other treaded machines rumble about, choppers scan caves for you know who.

One of these rugs is rendered with a little more precision, cleaner text, words spelled quasi- correctly, rifles and RPGs straighter and to scale. One says “made in Afghanistan” and the other, “maden afgaanistan,” an odd label stressing the fact that yes, “these fuckers are legit, you’re not going to find these at Walmart”.

Rugs that really catch Westerners’ attention are the 9-11 memorial rugs.

These montages not only tells a story, but they leap from the attack on the United States to the United States attack on the Taliban government. The illusion of depth is unique to the 9/11 rugs. In previous motifs, only small tanks hint at implied perspective, but here, the two main figures (twin towers) are drawn in sophomoric 3D. The overlaying American and Afghan flags, linked by a dove of peace, adds a simple field of perspective in contrast to the flat overhead view other pieces. In fact, the flags cut the composition in half, the top (state sponsored terrorist attack) the bottom (state sponsored regime change attack) and plead for peace in the middle? Both planes ram the twin towers, you see the planes enter as well as the massive explosions they birth, flight numbers woven next to each wing. An aircraft carrier, floating at the bottom, launches a giant missile, the letters USA taking up most of the deck.

Source material, for the first time, is taken not from the surrounding area, but from the propaganda leaflets dropped by coalition forces. Pioneered by the British in World War One (we can credit General Swinton, 1914 - he paid for the initial cost out of pocket and recouped his loses after the battle) , the tactic of blasting the enemy with paper fliers as psychological attacks has endured for almost a century. Handing out leaflets to civilians is a more contemporary approach to sway would be converts of the new insurgency. These black and white fliers provide models to work from and the collage approach seems more natural as one leaflet can be placed above another before the first fiber is threaded. It is strange that the poorly designed and pixilated military leaflets are being used to create hand made folk art. An extremist government executes a makeshift, but brilliantly orchestrated terrorist attack in which one financial center is hit and the media is given ample time to film and photograph the second impact in real time. Images/audio from the event are broadcasted all over the world so the symbolism of the event permanently wounds the psyche of the Western world… the number of casualties is secondary to the visual shock of a global capitalistic center melting (see Jean Baudrillard “The Spirit of Terrorism” 2001). Stills are photoshopped onto dollar size leaflets and passed around by the retaliating/liberating party to promote olive branch style winning of hearts and minds. Images are then collaged and transcribed into rugs by the oppressed population of the extremist government.

One of the most subtle and strange images depicted on the 9/11 war rug isn’t the crisp autumn colored explosions or the leaping businesses men and women (my particular rug doesn’t have falling New Yorkers, but some do). A lone news copter spies from above the fiery towers. In no leaflet is there a civilian helicopter and I’ve yet to see, even though some aerial photos were taken from them, a helicopter in the background of stills taken on that horrible morning. The artist has placed this hovering eye above the scene right in the middle of the composition. Intentional or not, the conceptual juxtaposition is a little eerie. The people of Afghanistan, with satellite dishes hot glued to tin roofs, understand this is a media war and it has infiltrated their most shadowed places. I know it's a stretch.

The lines of intent are blurry at best and the 9/11 rugs, with their wiggly rendering and contrasting colors, aren’t obvious protest signs or shouts of solidarity. Many questions puzzle the viewer. Did the artist leave in the peace dove because this is what she wants… peace? Is the artist just copying the leaflets because they are interesting? Was the artist skilled enough to omit the dove all together? Rugs that say “The army of the Taliban is leaving Afghanistan” show US forces destroying Afghan vehicles, but the predominant weapons that we are shown aren’t US rifles; they’re Russian surplus and outdated bazookas. Afghan flags are raised, not stars and stripes.

Unlike the Zapatista rag dolls of Chiapas Mexico, which are made to glorify the rebels robbed of their land, these rugs don’t seem to have a firm stance or position. They document a culture of turmoil and sorrow, of two very different ideologies bashing heads in our multi media global village. It’s as about as postmodern as you can get.

Posted by Rock Heals at November 30, 2005 06:40 AM