WHAT'S YOUR WAR?
Sharone Vendriger
News Coloring Station
Paper, ink, crayons, table, chairs
2010
My work emerges from a desire to eradicate fear. More often than not powerful forces in our society resort to pumping fear into public imagination as a cheap yet highly effective mechanism of gaining more power, using fear and intimidation to carve into individual liberties. I’ve often asked myself: Why do I dread reading the news? Why do thoughts of financial markets, pollution or hunger exhaust and overwhelm me? Although I may not have answers to those questions I recognize that reality can be unbearably neutral, and I have faith in human imagination to construct and deconstruct realities. I’m curious to see what happens when a space opens up in a calm mind, especially in the presence of a different kind of representation of current events. My work aims to create that complex space. A space of clarity charged with information from reality, which unfolds according to subject through a straightforward presentation of material, function and facts. For example, in my coloring station piece, my process is to research and educate myself on a topic such as human trafficking, sex slavery, acid burn victims, torture, financial systems, architecture, the environment, etc. I gather documentation and hand draw images in the style of a coloring book. I hand make the coloring books and pages to look like commercially consumable artifacts. They have a logo and are printed on special paper. The goal is to create images that can tell/evoke a story without text, in a simple coloring book. The work is straight forward, a table is dressed with crayons and a variety of images to color. It is activated by viewer participation. The meditative process of coloring disarms the participant with a child like activity and opens up a casual space for conversation regarding the origin of the image and further thoughts and questions. It may result in curiosity, humor, empathy, conversation, examples or opposition.