Overview
"War is the norm, peace is the exception." --Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003
"The rest of the world watches America; America watches 'American Idol'." -- Charles A. Kupchan, The Washington Post, April 2005.
The Genocide Convention was ratified in 1948 by 136 nations, and yet large-scale human tragedy and crimes against humanity continue. It has not been for lack of trying on the part of many individuals and nations that genocide and torture have been allowed to reoccur. Instead, it is a lack of political will, or perhaps a willingness to expend political capital, that mass murder, rape and torture, still take place. It is indeed shameful that in 2005 the phrase "never again", chanted after the Holocaust, and now
Through photojournalism, video, painting, sculpture and drawing, the artists in We Could Be Heroes absorb harsh realities such as war, starvation and genocide, and reinterpret these monstrous issues into poignant works of art exploring absurdity, frustration, and business as usual in the Nation's Capitol. Photography of Western Darfur and the Nuba Mountain regions of Sudan by J Carrier, documentation of the global landmine problem through director Brian Liu's photo stills and excerpts from the new documentary Disarm (ToolboxDC/NSP Films), and the new documentary Far from Home by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post photographer Lucian Perkins, sets the context for D.C. artists, Evan Berodt, Lisa Garfield, Carole Wagner Greenwood, and Paul Weil, to reflect on current world events.
Uniting photojournalists with visual artists to present complex human challenges, the exhibition provides the context for an open forum to consider heroism and our responsibility to our neighbors across the globe. The work presented in We Could be Heroes seeks to build an awareness about tragedies in far off nations not seen enough in today's media, while challenging the viewer to contemplate his or her own power to affect change.
About the artists:
Evan Berodt studied painting at the University of Maryland. Most recently, he created the two-man painting exhibition Cash & Carry, at the D.C. Arts Center with Treiops Treyfid. Berodt has a long and complex Washington history as a musician and painter. According to Berodt, "considering all of the fighting and destruction occurring today, it often seems like war is not the exception, but the rule; as a means of getting by, we constantly filter away the reality of its brutality. In Washington, DC, life during these endless battles is routine. Grey skies, office buildings, motorcades, and helicopters flying overhead--these are our familiar staples during war. I wanted to show the calm democratic business of war: the people who create, prevent, and define this ever-present conflict." His painting of Condolezza Rice exiting her motorcade does just that.
After graduating with a degree in biology, J Carrier went on to become a drummer for a punk band, recorded a couple of albums and toured throughout the US and Europe. It was only after living in Ecuador as a Peace Corps Volunteer that he began his career as a photographer. Since then J has worked as a freelance photographer for clients including The Washington Post, LA Times, Bloomberg News and the Discovery Channel. He has recently worked in tsunami-hit Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and the Darfur and Nuba Mountain regions of Sudan for Save the Children and other international aid agencies.
Lisa Garfield is a recent graduate of the International Center of Photography. A native Washingtonian, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her most recent works have used performance, video and film to create absurdist scenarios that are inspired by current social and political issues, using allegory and fantasy to describe their physical and emotional effect on the individual.
Carole Wagner Greenwood is an artist, chef and restaurateur living and working in Washington, DC. She graduated from the University of Richmond with a degree in political science where she also studied sculpture with Demetrios Mavroudis. Her work has been seen at Lucky 13, Millennium Arts Center, Hemphill Fine Arts, Fusebox, The Corcoran Museum and Strand on Volta. She was also a writer for the on-line blog, <5 Things>, a web based column about the daily practice of making art. She studied cuisine and pastry in France at Le Cordon Bleu, La Varenne and Lenotre and received The Anne Crutcher Fellowship from Les Dames d'Escoffier. Greenwood is the chef and owner of Buck's Fishing & Camping, a seasonally inspired restaurant with three stars from The Washington Post and one of Washingtonian Magazine's "Best Restaurants" for 2005.
Brian Liu has over a decade of experience as a designer and photojournalist with published work in a wide range of publications from The New York Times to Rolling Stone Magazine, has done documentary photo assignments for clients including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Peace Corps, and Icelandair; and more recently DV documentary filmmaking for various independent productions (incl. "Fighting Back: Women in Afghanistan", "Burn To Shine", "Pancake Mountain") and for major music artists (incl. Thievery Corporation). Liu and Mary Wareham, a key architect of the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, have just completed directing their first feature, Disarm (Next Step Productions/ToolboxDC), a documentary on the global landmine problem. Disarm took more than one year to complete, and took the crew to more than a dozen post-conflict zones including Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burma, Colombia, and Iraq. Disarm previewed to the United Nations in December 2004, and will soon be screening in film festivals and entering into broadcast negotiations (disarmfilm.org). Liu is also the founder and creative director of Toolbox Design, a full service creative agency based in Washington, DC (toolboxdc.com).
Lucian Perkins is a staff photographer for The Washington Post. He got his start under Gary Winogrand at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2000 Perkins won his second Pulitzer Prize along with two colleagues at The Washington Post for their coverage of the Kosovo conflict. In 1996 he won World Press Photo of the Year for a photograph he took of a young boy peering out the back window of a bus leaving a war-torn area of Chechnya. In 1995 he and Post reporter, Leon Dash, were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their four-year study on the effects of poverty on three generations of a Washington, D.C. family through the eyes of the family's matriarch, Rosa Lee Cunningham. In 1994 he received "Newspaper Photographer of the Year" by the National Press Photographers Association for a portfolio that included projects in Russia and a "Behind-the-Scenes" look at the New York fashion shows. Perkins has covered many major events that occurred over the last twenty years including Russia since 1988; the war in Bosnia; the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank; the Gulf War; and more recently, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has also covered many daily and political events in Washington, DC and the U.S.
Paul Weil studied painting at the University of Maryland and then immersed himself in the creative community in Washington, DC where he helped form the Masters of Art collective which hosted ten exhibitions between 1997 and 1999 at spaces including DCAC, MOCA DC, and LIPA galleries. Weil then joined friends at Toolbox Design working with clients including Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines—two organizations Toolbox collaborated with most recently on the documentary, Disarm. In 2000 Weil left Toolbox and became a founding member of Birdman recording artists, the Apes. Also in 2002, Weil moved to New York City to live with his wife where he works as an illustrator and has since been published in The Fader, Crash (Paris,) and K48 magazines as well as with Simon & Schuster.
Exhibition Hours for We Could Be Heroes: Wednesday Saturday 1- 7 pm, and by appointment.
TRANSFORMER is a Washington, D.C. based 501(c) 3 non-profit, artist-centered organization that connects and promotes emerging artists locally, nationally and internationally. Partnering with artists, curators, art spaces and other cultural entities, Transformer serves as a catalyst and advocate for emergent expression in the visual arts. Transformer's 2004/2005 exhibition series is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities/NEA, The Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, and The Visionary Friends of Transformer.
