Intermission (Halloween Iraq): Portrait III

The work of collaborative artistic partners Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla responds to moments of social, political and environmental crisis. The pair, who have worked together since 1995, approach each project through intensive archival research, and use a wide range of media, from photography and performance, to installation, to explore their chosen subject.

This work from 2010 belongs to a series that deals with American soldiers as they celebrate Halloween in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Depicting a moment of recreation (the ‘intermission’ of combat as the work’s title states), it shows the soldiers playing guitars dressed in costumes that highlight symbols of death, with one wearing a skeleton mask and the other a mask of Frankenstein. The jarring juxtaposition of the guitar-playing soldiers in their masks underscores the permeation of violence into all facets of life – including the realm of the creative – on the front line,  in the ‘theatre of war’.

Maria Zagala, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs