Cosmos Beyond Atrocity,

2024

Through immersion and re-narration, I tell stories of anti-war veterans and expressions of resistance with the intention of transcending our cycles of violence. In a space designed to offer a contemplative moment, the coffered ceiling decays, breaking away. Within the coffers are painterly representations of bas-reliefs, depicting images drawn from the Museum's collections that I translated from flat sources into sculpted bas-reliefs and back again into painted surface.

Excavating the histories of war in works of ancient, Byzantine, and Islamic art in Museum storage, as well as engravings by Jacques Callot, Hendrick Goltzius, and Rembrandt van Rijn, I intuitively chose works that provide testimony to atrocities we hear of over and over again throughout history. Between each pair of coffers sits an oil lamp found at ancient Antioch, circular in form and allowing the eye to rest.

The central vision of an ecstatic future comes from my twenty-five-year project honoring Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I was also inspired by recent engagement with the community at Princeton, watching the night skies with astrophysics students at Peyton Observatory, witnessing Students for Prison Education, Abolition, and Reform, experiencing the spring 2024 campus protests as I painted en plein air, studying the light.

You will see: a Vietnamese finger cymbal with a disembodied male arm, dominating in its transparency, a single ding and clarity of vibration—a perfect pitch; activists: women in prayer; performance artists Kim Jones, the brothers Lê Đức Hải, and Lê Ngọc Thanh; historic anti-war leaders Al Hubbard and Ron Ferrizzi, and the soldiers they were helping.

Jane Irish, artist