17th November 2007 – 6th January 2008
Museum of Mocenigo Palace: Entrance hall on the ground floor

Twenty-nine works on paper by the USA artist Susan Crile, which are inspired by the horror of the photos taken in the Iraqui prison of Abu Ghraib in 2004. Perfect and, at the same time, soft images which skilfully reverse the intentions of those who had taken such photos: not victory trophies but unspeakable proves of brutality, not degraded victims, but painful humanity.
Susan Crile, during her artistic career, had already run into the consequences of war: her apocalyptic Fires of War, realized after travelling ten days through the areas of the Iraqi war of 1991, gave her back burning, barren, shocked and senseless panoramas.
Now, again, war. This time the unbearable disgust given by the images of the hellish Abu Ghraib are revealed to the whole world.
From a formal point of view Susan’s work is perfect, with her masterly use of chalk, of the diaphanous white tones for the victims, of the full and opaque colours for the torturers, with that essentiality   and mastery of her mark, with those monochrome colours characterized by dramatically eloquent contrasts which are strongly able to evoke a deep emotional involvement, in finding, evident and clearly defined, in those paintings, the photos of Abu Ghraib.
Such photos, just like she remembers in her catalogue, are documents and proves. And the worst thing is that they were taken to provide evidence of overwhelming and violence as positive values, the humiliation of victims as a symbol of victory.