Sunday 21 October 2007

WALID RAAD - UNTITLED (1987-2007)


I went to see the 'Brave new worlds' exhibition at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, a couple of weeks ago. The show exhibited work by 24 contemporary artists. The work exhibited was pretty diverse, and although all pieces obviously tied to the title of the exhibition, not all pieces were there to take a strong political stance; For a good explanation of the exhibition click on this W to get to the Walker Art Center site.
the picture that i've posted was a piece that was framed with about 20 others, as part of a series, by Walid Raad. Each piece was a scan from the same book, and showed a black and white photo of a place, with a load of different sizes and colours of circle stickers stuck onto it. The photos were all taken whilst Raad was living in a war zone, between 1987-2007 and were shot in different countries. Raad would go out of house at night, after the shootings had stopped, and would collect dead bullets out of the walls, trees, cars and where ever they got shot into. He would then take a photo of the place he collected the bullets from. Bullet manufacturers colour the tips of their bullets, so they can be identified. The stickers on each of the photos were placed where he found the bullets, the colour of the sticker corresponds to the colour found on the tip of the bullet, and the size of the sticker corresponded to the diameter of the bullet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

walid raad's work is not completely factual.. He likes to show how surreal situations really are by adding fictional elements.