Recently in my world history class, we explored WW2. I got to show my students this adorable photo of my dad (baby) on VE Day. If you’re new to following me and new to my blog, you may not know that the focus of my academic work is on lived experiences of armed conflict and post-conflict contexts. Here is a link to some of my work on this.
My art has also been used for book covers about people in contexts of conflict. See below:
I’ve been finding history textbooks to be sorely lacking in many ways. Of course, they are always Western-centric. They also tend to give an impersonal gloss over of what happened, who allied with whom, statistics, ideological assessments, etc. Meanwhile, the lived realities of war and its aftermath are neglected.
In my teaching and research, I prefer to focus on the people and how people experience life in war. I suppose I have an agenda—I want students to build a sense of care and empathy for people living through war around the world. I suppose I also want them to know in some tangible way, however small, the heavy cost of war.
The humanity of war is profoundly complex. A dirty mess of the extremes of good and evil. Healing, or reconstituting the fabric of families and communities, is work that is imperfect, hard, costly, endless, and sometimes utterly beautiful.
Doing research in post-conflict northern Uganda, I often felt (and still do) as though I was straddling two realities. A poignant example from when my kids were with me for six months in northern Uganda in 2011: I remember returning one evening to our barb-wired compound in the old colonial neighbourhood of Gulu town. I had spent the day listening to the stories of children who had lived through war. Upon coming through the front door, my kids complained, “The power was off all day so we couldn’t play the Wii!“
More commonly these days, I experience this juxtaposition when sitting in the comforts of my home in Vancouver, communicating with friends in northern Uganda. I often wonder how I or my kids have any right to complain or feel stressed about anything when our lives are relatively so abundant.
It’s a practice in relativity—accepting that both realities exist simultaneously, and all experiences are valid. My kids’ struggles are valid in the context of our lives in Vancouver. The challenges of my Ugandan friends as they struggle in a context shaped by global inequality, is simultaneously real and unjust. It’s the tricky work of holding two truths at once.
This is a painting (above) about relating, caring on a very human level without comparing our lives.
Even in contexts of relative security never directly affected by armed conflict, we all engage in the work of healing after a storm of some sort. It is the work of rebuilding and strengthening relationships, of mindful appreciation for the peace that surrounds us. In the spirit of such work, the below painting is titled, ‘After the storm.’
‘After the storm’
36” x 12” x 1.5” mixed media on wood.
I’d love to know if any of this resonates with you. Send me an email (beth@artbybws.com) and let me know.
Cheers!
Beth