This week, the Aperture Gallery in the Erb Memorial Union plays host to “Children of the Gulf War” — an art exhibit aimed at documenting the effects war and economic sanctions have had on the children of Iraq. The exhibit does not include paintings or drawings; real faces stare out of Japanese photojournalist Takashi Morizumi’s black and white images.
A woman clasps her dying child’s hand. A small girl screams, belly distended, as she is treated for kidney and liver diseases in Baghdad’s Mansool Children’s Hospital. Empty uranium penetrators are scattered across a barren landscape. The photograph’s caption says reactors like this released 36,000 times the radioactive atoms released by the Hiroshima bombing. But other images show joy juxtaposed with grief — smiling children and adults, hands outstretched.
“It’s basically images of the Gulf War in 1991, of the children and the effects of war,” exhibit coordinator Janice Zagorin said. “This simply puts a face to what war is.”
The display is sponsored by the UO Cultural Forum, Students for Peace and Lane County WAND (Women’s Action for News Directions).
Zagorin said residents of Iraq are experiencing increased leukemia and birth defects as a result of radioactive materials from depleted uranium used as missile hardeners during the Gulf War. “It recently came to people’s understanding that the Gulf War was a nuclear war,” she said.
This is the exhibit’s second stop on its national tour, and its first appearance in Oregon. The photographs were recently displayed at the Berkely Public Library. The next stop will be at Oregon State University.
Zagorin also coordinated a discussion, “Health Effects of War & Alternatives to a War on Terrorism,” scheduled for Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Sacred Heart Medical Center Auditorium, located at 1255 Hilyard St. The talk is presented by Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility.
“I think it is very timely given that we are about to go into another war with Iraq under slim pretenses,” Zagorin said. “People should be interested (in the display and discussion) to prevent getting involved in this again.”
The “Children of the Gulf War” exhibit will be on display through Jan. 18.