National Art Education Association War Rugs: Woven Documents of Conflict and Hope Author(s): WILLIAM CHARLAND Source: Art Education, Vol. 64, No. 6 (November 2011), pp. 25-32 Published by: National Art Education Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41480626 Accessed: 01-03-2017 19:49 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Education This content downloaded from 146.86.206.174 on Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:49:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Instructional Resources War Rugs: Woven Documents of Conflict and Hope WILLIAM CHARLAND Recommended for Grades 6-12 Figure 1. Subtle martial imagery (Baluch style). Collection of author. I Photo: W.Charland. November 201 1 / ART EDUCATION 25 This content downloaded from 146.86.206.174 on Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:49:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Exposed world, andworld,Exposed conflict many many and students to imagesconflict aroundunder- aroundstudents of the violence under- stand such struggles only through brief news clips and sound bites. By providing an introduction to the history, design, and production of War Rugs: An Introduction Afghan war rugs, this Instructional War rugs (see Figures 1 and 2) are hand-made The Socio-Political Context Resource is intended to help woven commodities produced in the rural of Afghan War Rugs students pause and consider the villages and urban workshops of Afghanistan, The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet context within which individuals as well as crowded refugee camps in Iran and Union in 1979 followed internal unrest turn to ages-old cultural practices Pakistan. Graphic and visually striking, war in the Afghan government (Maley, 2009). rugs are marketed globally, available on the to maintain a sense of continuity Afghanistan's communist party, upon seizing street corners of New York and other major control in 1978, turned to the Soviet Union as war indelibly alters the world cities, and in the virtual markets of eBay for support, alienating large portions of the around them. These pedagogical and other online sites. War rugs are afforded country's traditional Islamic population. strategies are intended for middle- exhibition space in museums and galleries An Islamic insurgency formed to drive the school and high-school students across the United States and Europe, and communists from power. Fearing the loss of who have achieved a certain discussed in scholarly books, journals, and influence in the region, Soviet leaders quickly museum publications (Allen, 2011; Cooke & level of intellectual and affective overthrew the Afghan government and MacDowell, 2005; Kuryluk, 1989; Mascelloni, replaced it with a more reliable subordinate maturity. 2009). They range in quality from tightly government (Kakar, 1995), simultaneously knotted intricate works of subtle coloration Learning objectives include: flooding Afghanistan with troops to quash and meticulous craftsmanship to simpler, the determined resistance efforts of Afghan • Analyzing and interpreting war rugs; roughly constructed works dashed off for Muslim groups. quick sale. • Exploring the subjectivity of seeing, However, "the resistance to the Soviet interpreting, and evaluating; War Textiles invasion was nationwide" (Kakar, 1995, • Recognizing constancy and change p.79). Afghanistan's 250,000 square miles War is a defining activity in the history of in cultural expression; of topographical contrasts made modern societies, and thus provides a key theme • Examining gender roles and the warfare difficult for the invaders. While for artists and writers through the ages. In reconfiguration of gender expectations; Soviet vehicles ground down in sand and Homer s Iliad, Helen of Troy is described dust, Afghan resistance fighters struck with • Investigating related work by weaving "the story of the war" (Pantelia, hit-and-run skirmishes, and found refuge in contemporary artists; and 1993, p.495) between the Trojans and the rugged mountains and valleys. The weaponry • Exploring the role of creativity as a Achaeans. The war ships and battlefields, employed by both sides - automatic rifles, universal coping mechanism. hails of arrows and crowds of warriors, the rocket-propelled grenade launchers, missiles, supine dead and dying that constitute the fighter planes, helicopters, tanks, and Bayeux Tapestry , probably commissioned in personnel carriers - are depicted in war rugs the 1070s, speak of the Norman conquest of (see Figures 1 and 2). During the conflict, England in the Middle Ages (Lewis, 1999). more than 5 million Afghans fled their Textiles with war themes generally occur "in homeland, most of these to the relative safety societies where the production of cloth is of surrounding nations (Maley, 2009). already a pervasive medium of deep cultural significance" (Cooke, 2005a, p. 9), and are The Taliban, a militant fundamentalist group, nearly always created by women. In addition moved to assume control of Afghanistan. to Afghan war rugs, examples of textiles that Soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks document conflict are found among Hmong on New York City and Washington, DC, the US demanded the Taliban turn over leaders story cloths, Asafo flags, Haitian hunger cloths, Chilean arpilleras, Kuna molas, and of the group claiming responsibility for these other artworks depicting the modern world attacks (al-Qaeda), who were believed to be through a prism of traditional culture. seeking refuge in Afghanistan. The Taliban refused, and the US (with British support) commenced bombing Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, eventually handing over command of the military security forces to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2003. 26 ART EDUCATION / November 201 1 This content downloaded from 146.86.206.174 on Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:49:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Instructional Resources Figure 2. Red rug, obvious imagery (Turkman style). Collection of author. Photo: W. Charland. November 201 1 / ART EDUCATION 27 This content downloaded from 146.86.206.174 on Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:49:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Figure 3. Traditional boteh form (left) as basis for grenade images. Photo: W. Charland. Although Afghanistan has witnessed figurative representation (Mascelloni, the approval of a new constitution, the 2009) and narrative content. Images range seating of the first democratically elected from flattened, highly geometricized, and leader, and the training of a national army, abstracted forms (see Figure 1), to simpli- conflict continues. The civilian population fied but recognizable representations (see of Afghanistan continues to suffer hard- Figure 2), as well as pictures and maps ships and casualties, while many millions detailed enough to distinguish specific wait out the war in refugee camps (British battles, individuals, and weapons (Cooke, Broadcasting Corporation, 2009; Public 2005b, p. 59). Broadcasting Service, 2008). As the technique of weaving is built upon impressions with later an xly axis of vertical warp and horizontal Cultural Adaptations weft threads, certain shapes are more easily lowîwledge^stuëeiîfe War rugs are created by "survivor- artists. created than others. Straight lines are more driven by the twin needs of subsistence and readily woven than curves, and the edges of come to understand how self-expression" (Cooke, 2005a, p. 24). Rug diagonal lines and circles appear stepped, weavers from Baluch, Turkmen, and Hazara much as they do in a magnification of pixels interpretations of art tribes (Cooke, 2005a) fled to refugee camps in a digital image. This repertoire of simpli- in Iran and Pakistan. There they shared fied and geometricized forms allows artists can develop and grow. experiences, skills, and visual motifs, thus to adapt existing motifs to new purposes synthesizing distinct tribal styles (Hawley, by applying a few simple changes. Thus a 1970) into a new, broader Afghani aesthetic. boteh form (known in the West as a paisley) Deprived of traditional means of earning a becomes a hand grenade (see Figure 3). living, men resorted to weaving, an expres- A row of decorative diamonds in a göl, a sive and economic venue previously the prominent Turkmen ornament, shifts into domain of women (Mascelloni, 2009). the tread of a tank (see Figure 4), and stars While the evolution of the war rug is not and flowers are reinterpreted as explosions clearly delineated, modern weapons were (see Figure 2). seen in Afghan rugs produced in the Baluchistan region beginning in the 1930s. Formal Analysis vs. Lived Experience Examples of weaponry as visual motifs that When presenting eye-catching works, a risk appear prior to the Soviet invasion refute exists of inadvertently deemphasizing the the notion that traditional weavers were challenges, setbacks, and triumphs of the simply documenting the war around them. artists' daily lives within war- torn envi- Instead, they replaced the dragons, goats, ronments. No discussion of the conflicts peacocks,