This artwork installation protested the USA’s involvement in so many violent conflicts.  Here in the States, in daily life we rarely talk about the violence we have initiated and sustained in other countries.  The wars just go on and on!  Because our military is all volunteer (no draft), the vast majority of the population is not affected.  Most of us just keep shopping and thinking about ourselves.  Meanwhile all these men and women keep dying.  And the numbers of people dying from countries we are “liberating” are much, much higher.  Not just military but so many civilians are killed.

This installation keeps people remembering HOW MANY Americans had died.  In 2018, over 6,900 U.S. military men and women had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since the start of the wars.  Remembering Our Fallen displayed each soldier’s name handwritten in red ink on a white banner and hung in row after row.  It is a data-visualization project giving us one way to see the human cost of these wars. 

I hoped the mesmerizing motion of the banners lowered people’s political defenses, allowing my message to slip in, unnoticed and unchallenged by rigid partisan thinking.  I hoped the emotional responses the artwork provokes would change how people thought about war and our political leaders.