1923:32°43′N 70°07′E / 2023:31°31′N 34°27′E

 

Diptych - acrylic on canvas with whipping twine 

 

These canvases represent two connected events separated by two thousand miles and one hundred years.  Soon after its inception in 1918, the British Royal Air force pioneered the technique of bombing civilian infrastructure to control political insurgency. In 1923, at Arsul Kot, close to the border with Afghanistan, the RAF dropped leaflets warning the civilian population of a coming raid, explaining that if they were injured it was their own fault for not evacuating their homes. In 2023, leaflets with very similar wording were dropped on Gaza. By drawing attention to the similarity of these events, the historical can help clarify the complexities of the contemporary. Boundaries can be the cause of violence and destruction which is represented by the disrupted surfaces of these works – surfaces made by deconstructing maps from each leaflet drop and stitching them back together along marked boundary lines.