Los Angeles Times Calendar Art Review
by Christopher Knight February 22, 2002
Afghan Rugs with a New Currency
Adaptable traditions of folk art meet the life- sustaining demands of the commercial
marketplace in “wanna buy an Afghan War Rug”.
Eleven carpets, most the size of small prayer rugs but one that’s 4’
by 6 ‘, are on view at DiRT gallery. The gentle flora, playful fauna and
religious iconography found in traditional Afghan weaving have been replaced with
the cold hardware and brutal machinery of war.
The wool rugs were woven between 1979 and 1989 by women in refugee camps in Pakistan
(and perhaps Iran) during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Rich, earthy colors,
made from natural vegetable dyes are arrayed in familiar ways. A wide border surrounds
a contained field in the center. Images are flat, seen in silhouette and often
edged in black. The patterns are symmetrical.
What’s distinctive is the subject matter. Kalashnikov rifles stand like sentinels,
framing row of tanks, helicopters and troop carriers. Fields of stylized hand
grenades are bordered in bullets. Land mines are laid out in decorative rows.
Like an x-ray, ammunition is glimpsed inside weaponry. The weapons seem almost
cheerful, partly because of the cartoon-like simplifications and partly because
expected patterns seem to have morphed. A floral blossom becomes a stylized explosion,
a water pipe turns into a grenade.
The most startling rug is the largest. Beneath your feet, a parade of military
might passes by, flanked by an honor guard of enormous rifles, as if it were May
Day or Veteran’s Day. Traditional decorative and abstract patterns are woven
into the hardware, which results in anomalies like checkerboard land mines and
jaunty argyle helicopters. Paradise and purgatory get all mixed.
These surprising rug may have been made in anticipation of a Soviet market for
wartime souvenir-although, given the Russian defeat in Afghanistan, that market
didn’t develop. Since then they’ve been turning up in the port warehouses
of Hamburg, Germany.In light of recent events, they’ve taken on a new and
unexpected currency.
DiRT gallery
West Hollywood, CA