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Navigating the Aftermath

By Luke Wilcox

"It's not clear how much time passed. Perhaps it was only a handful of minutes. Suddenly, she awoke to a burst of pain. Sitting squarely on top of her legs was a shell bomb. Shock and horror. Crushing weight. Loss of consciousness. An errant US shell had crashed through her bedroom wall and landed on top of her as she slept in bed. It did not detonate. If it had, this would be a different story. There would be nothing left to speak of."

— Excerpt from Zainab Jawhar, a book by Clare Beer, Monica Haller, and Zainab Jawhar appearing in the exhibit, Navigating the Aftermath.

Navigating the Aftermath is an art exhibit and campaign that creates a shared space for Iraqis and Americans to speak about the ongoing war in Iraq and its consequences.

Organized by the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP), Navigating the Aftermath opened on February 18 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. From June to October, it will tour with the film, The Unreturned (a documentary film following five Iraqi refugee families), to six towns in Minnesota: Duluth, Ely, Mankato, Bemidji, St. Cloud, and Winona.

In Navigating the Aftermath, Iraqi and American artists (including veterans) explore the effects of the ongoing Iraq War on our two countries. Artists look at the war through the lens of their personal experiences. In their individual works and in their dialogue, they interface with the tragedy of the ongoing war.

The show's curator, Tricia Khutoretsky, says, "From the American perspective, the artists are veterans, friends and family of soldiers, or those closely tied to the war through activism. As the artists' battle with ignored and misunderstood experiences, with sharing them to try to make sense of them, their voices speak of lives changed and lives taken in a place called Iraq. Joining the American artists are not only artists living in Iraq, but Iraqi-Americans who have left the place they once called home. The artists represent the voice of a contemporary and modern Iraq, hopeful and invested in the future of their country. They confront their losses and the path ahead searching for meaning and a new understanding of the identity of an Iraqi and the identity of his or her country."

One participating artist, Monica Haller, tells the story of Zainab Jawhar, an Iraqi woman who lost her legs to an American missile in 2004. The Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project, along with its partner in Iraq the Muslim Peacemaker Teams and local partners in Minneapolis, brought Zainab to Minneapolis in the fall of 2010 to receive prosthetic limbs and physical therapy, free of charge. Haller, who performed an installation piece of Zainab's words in the exhibit gallery, asks, "How do I transmit this? How do I witness this? How do I understand her reality, her disability? (the cause of which I have ownership). I am trying to meditate on these tasks. Trying to find a tool for the job."

The artists whose work is exhibited in Navigating the Aftermath have the opportunity to present to their audiences unfiltered perspectives on the Iraq War. While the exhibit does not represent one holistic point of view, it challenges all participants to examine their assumptions about Iraq, US veterans, refugees, displacement, and international migration.

Participating artists include Jesse Albrecht, Ayad Alkadhi, Susu Attar, Camille Gage, Sundus Abdul Hadi, Monica Haller, Aaron Hughes, Jim Lommasson, Reben Majeed, Aaron McLeod, Jamal Penjweny, Megan Rye, and Jane Powers.

One artist writes that her work in the exhibit intends "to visually return the war to the forefront — to portray a communal sense of loss, ambiguity, and sorrow." As Americans, we must begin to live honestly with that loss and sorrow, repair our relationship with Iraqis, and reform the cultural and political systems that enabled the Iraq War.

From Zainab Jawhar:

"The reality is that she did not get a set of 'new legs,' but rather a set of new prostheses which are artificial and, therefore, second best. Even American-made prostheses cannot buy a free pass to her old life. The accident and its handicapping consequences will never be erased. In her country especially, Zainab is another hapless casualty of war. Currently, there is no system that gives value to the tens of thousands of men, women and children who have been injured, maimed and disabled. Though Zainab may now be able to walk the length of a classroom unassisted, she cannot change the home she returns to and the problems that persist there: political instability, a limping economy, and a society that cloisters its handicapped."

For more information on Navigating the Aftermath, visit navigatingtheaftermath.org. For more information on the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project, visit reconciliationproject.org.

To order a copy of Zainab Jawhar, visit bit.ly/ePi8zp.

Luke Wilcox is the Development and Communications Director at the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP). He holds an MA in International Relations with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa from Boston University and speaks Arabic. He was a Katherine Davis Fellow for Peace in 2011.