caravia/aktivism

"I, like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity, especially because the United States is supposed to be this model of compassion."The artist was so upset about what the US had done in Iraq that he set out to create a series of paintings that would forever etch the crime upon the collective consciousness of humanity. What Botero has achieved is nothing short of a contemporary equivalent to Pablo Picasso's Guernica, the masterwork painted in outrage over the aerial bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War. Said Botero, "No one would have ever remembered the horrors of Guernica if not for the painting." And no one will ever forget the vision of hell Botero has committed to canvas with these startling oil paintings. Each work is titled Abu Ghraib and given a number from 1 to 50 to set them apart. Not that they need to be differentiated, because each oil is a unique and bone chilling representation of what US soldiers did to their prisoners behind Abu Ghraib's silent and impenetrable walls.

The horrors committed at Abu Ghraib prison came to light last year when "trophy photos" taken by US soldiers became public. The explicit photographs showed US soldiers humiliating and torturing their prisoners. To date, seven US soldiers of low rank have been punished for their role in the abuses, however, it's doubtful that upper echelon commanders or politicians will ever be brought to trial for the outrages. But Botero's paintings are not so much inspired by the appalling photos as they are by the written descriptions of the cruelty. In one painting the artist shows a US soldier savagely beating a defenseless blindfolded prisoner, in another a naked prisoner is handcuffed to his cell wall as though crucified -with women's underwear left on his head like a hood. Yet another of the forbidding works depicts three naked, hooded and trussed Iraqis heaped in a pyramid. All of the artist's paintings in the series are based upon actual testimonies that came out of the prison scandal, and Botero's paintings are imbued with an unflinching and indignant moral outrage.