Manuela Leal
Kalashnikov Close-Up, 2007
58 × 78 Inches (4 parts)

 

I haven't seen this work in person. I saw it on Manuela Leal's RSS feed for her website. Yes, I still actually follow via RSS every artist on ArtCat. I have emailed with her about this series of work in the past, and learned a few things about where these come from.

These are color pencil and spray paint on inkjet prints. The images come from various war-related foreign videos on YouTube. I watch the videos and take stills from the computer screen with a digital camera. I then print the images, have layers of spray paint and then color pencils on top... I have been interested in war images and in "rebuilding" images of war and bombed, decimated buildings and places for a while now...

On YouTube, these videos are often posted as "responses" to other videos, as "justifications" (i.e.: a documentary on Croatian concentration camps will be posted in response to a serbian nationalistic video, and a video of a foreign mujahideen on the side of Bosnians torturing Serbian soldiers will be posted in response to a video on the massacre of Bosnians in Srebrenica by Serbs...).

I recognize that detached from language (they are often in languages I cannot understand), these images of war (and often propaganda) are posted, watched and commented on by people to whom images still carry immense urgency and power - they need to be seen...

I would like to know if" art" could still envision another reality, if by "altering" images one can offer the possibility - even if fictional - of change...