Index of the Disappeared at Chicago Cultural Center
In March 2003, amidst historic international anti-war protests, the US led the illegal invasion of Iraq. The ensuing conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,500 US service members, while the reverberating effects of the broader US “Global War on Terror” continue to impact untold numbers of people around the globe. This 21st-century military conflict is deeply interlinked with the history of US counterinsurgency at home and abroad, including the legacy of frontier violence and the resulting Indigenous rebellions that marked the 18th- and 19th-century “American Indian Wars.”
SURVIVING THE LONG WARS: Reckon and Reimagine features the powerful work of Indigenous artists responding to the “American Indian Wars” alongside artists from the Greater Middle East and its diasporas reacting to the “Global War on Terror.” The exhibition explores how these works complicate and relate to the creative practices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) veterans whose experiences profoundly challenge the dominant histories of these long wars.
Collectively, these works begin to reckon with an ongoing violent history while creating space to build solidarity across difference. Unlikely connections emerge as the artists use diverse strategies to construct meaning out of the ruins of the long wars. They critique dominant colonial conventions and propose dissident people’s archives, while reworking the complex terrain of public monuments and memorials through the perspective of diverse BIPOC communities. By reckoning with these complex legacies the featured contemporary artists transform colonial materials and technologies to reimagine histories and futures.
Featuring artists Dorothy I. Burge, Miridith Campbell (Kiowa), Melissa Doud (Ojibwe), Ali Eyal, Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk), Chitra Ganesh, Mariam Ghani, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation), Gina Herrera (Costa Rican and Tesuque Pueblo), Rajkamal Kahlon, Monty Little (Diné), Hanaa Malallah, Hector René Membreño-Canales, Chris Pappan (Kaw/Osage, Lakota), Michael Rakowitz, Gerald Sheffield, Dwayne Wilcox (Oglala Lakota), and more.