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Imagemaker: Amjad Faur

Saturday, September 22 - 1:00PM to 1:30PM

A Scythe Across the Night Sky


With this series of images, I was attempting to address the strange and terrifying convergence of iconoclasm and scopophilia that characterized the destruction of ancient statues and images in Iraq and Syria under the brief rule of ISIS (or, ISIL, Daesh, etc.). When ISIS destroyed these Mesopotamian, Roman and pre-Islamic statues and temples, they reflexively filmed themselves doing so. This production, control, conceptualization, and dissemination of images, including beheadings, military operations, night raids and countless other atrocities, was part of the grand strategy ISIS employed to project terror, power and control. It was also a process by which they made images of the destruction of images. This cyclical and tortured relationship to images drove me to research and consider how images work as objects of worship and danger. I also thought about how the destruction of these long-forgotten Mesopotamian gods and goddesses, reanimated them and sucked them from the void of obscurity into the vision and imaginations of onlookers in the 21st century. This reminded me of wormholes, and how they theoretically bridge massive gulfs of time and space.


More information can be found at: http://amjadfaur.com/section/446036-A-Scythe-Across-the-Night-Sky.html

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