To Die For

To many people living in the “western world” genocide and ethnic cleansings are things of the past that haven’t been seen in this world since the atrocities that took place in WWII. We know however that this is not the case, since WWII genocides have been taking place around in countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia just to name a few. One of the most recent being the genocide in Darfur.

To understand the conflict in Darfur you must know a bit about the complex history of Sudan. By the late 18th century Darfur had grown into a multiethnic empire, its armies reached east to the Nile, and it controlled most of the trade of Africa along with Egypt.

In 1874 an Egyptian army conquered Darfur. In 1885, a Sudanese rebellion led by a religious leader known as the Mahdi, expelled the Egyptians from Sudan and proclaimed the area Mahdist state. A Darfurian Arab, Abdullah al-Taashi, succeeded the Mahdi as the ruler of Sudan from 1885 to 1898. Within those thirteen years disruption, bloodshed, and famine ran rampant in Darfur for the first time in the nation’s history.

Mean while, European countries were in the “Scramble for Africa”, building colonial empires on the continent through military conquest. Britain, which had occupied Egypt, became focused on defeating the Mahdist state to expand its colonial possessions. In 1898 the British army defeated the Mahdists. Uninterested in Darfur, the British initially recognized the Darfur sultanate, but later assassinated him in 1916. Darfur was officially incorporated into Sudan, which resulted in ethnic and regional tension in the area. Under this government Darfur was neglected and had the poorest health care, schools, and infrastructure of any part of Sudan. This situation continued after Sudan gained independence in 1956. Attempts to build a unified Darfurian political platform were repeatedly thwarted by ethnic and political divisions among Darfurian leaders. Distinct Arab and non-Arab ethnic groups emerged in the early 1980s.

The conflict in Darfur started when a civil war in neighboring Chad spilled over into Darfur in the 1980s. A Chadian warlord militia sponsored by Libya retreated into Darfur in the late 80’s, after the Chadians drove Libyan forces out of Chad. This Chadian militia formed an alliance with Darfurian Arabs who had little to no resources due to a severe drought. A shortage of water and farmable land led to increased conflict between the nomadic Arabs and the settled non-Arabs. The well-armed Arab alliance, which became known as Janjaweed. Launched attacks and raids on farming communities. Those communities then developed militias of their own.

The Sudanese government failed to address the issues of poverty, drought, and resulting famine in Darfur. Which led to more conflict over the limited resources in the area which in turn resulted in heightened grievances over the government’s longstanding neglect of the region. During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, discontent grew as the government failed to provide basic security for villagers, while backing the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed which brutally attacked non-Arab communities. Well armed fighters, pillaged and burned entire villages and massacred inhabitants. Janjaweed operations were well coordinated and synchronized with air force bombings. Several gruesome and bloody wars were then fought in the area.
According to the most recent statistics released by the United Nations the death toll has reached 200,000 but most estimates put the number closer to 400,000. But most agree that over 2.5 million people have been displaced due to this genocide. At this point over one third of the population of Darfur is living in refugee camps where contamination of water supplies and rape of women and young girls is prevalent.

Many artists around the world have spent countless hours working on projects to help spread the knowledge of the conflicts in Darfur. One group, Fabrica has done an excellent job in doing just that through their group exhibit called “To Die For.” This group consists of Piero Martinello’s “Africa Map Ketchup”, Daniel Streat’s “School Children”, “Child Soldier’s” and “Darfur Two Heads”, Priya Khatri’s “Ipod Head” and Ann Nam Young’s “Couple in Bed”.

The artist-activist group takes images of western culture and contrasts it with that of the war torn Darfur. These visual depictions have a direct appeal to Pathos and evokes such a strong emotional response that it is sure to shake most people to the very core of their being.

In Ann Nam Young’s Painting “Couple in Bed” we see two adults one male and one female sleeping peacefully in a bed with the female cuddling a small child and the man holding a teddy bear as a small dog is sleeping at the edge of the bed peacefully. In direct contrast to this peaceful heart warming moment we see on the out skirts of the bed many “Darfurian” bodies twisted, mangled and starving to death sprawled out across the space and underneath the bed. This painting out of the seven, in my opinion, does the best job evoking pathos because it directly relates to most people viewing it. Most of the people seeing this painting have a nice comfortable bed that they call their own at the end of the day and see this as a common universality of the world. It is only until they see a direct comparison to what and how they sleep juxtaposed against how many of the refugees in Darfur rest.

In the rest of the exhibit the group makes great use of it’s choice of materials, this can especially seen in the two pieces of work “Ipod Head” by Priya Khatri and Piero Martinello’s “Africa Map Ketchup.” In “Ipod Head” we see a man in his mid to late twenties shirtless with his head wrapped in ear buds presumable Ipod brand. On the right side of the picture just below the middle, we see a woman’s hand holding a white cord. Whether she is wrapping or unwrapping his head is left to the viewer to determine and make their own conclusions from that.

Or in “Africa Map Ketchup” by Piero Marinello we see a sculpture that indisputably resembles the continent of Africa, with a red splotch of ketchup where Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Egypt lay. He may have chosen to put the ketchup in that particular area because of the conflict in that region. Or because of the “Scramble for Africa” when much of Africa was being divided up or “eaten” by many European countries. Whatever the reason may be Marinello allows the viewer to reach their own conclusions and have their own discussions on the matter.