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Paradoxical Art
Lara Pomerantz '06 says she hopes a mixed-media
artwork she created for the spring 2006 course "The Arts and
Human Rights" will "raise important questions and spark
debate about issues of responsibility, freedom, and human rights." The
untitled work, a collage consisting of construction-paper cutouts
of an image of Fidel Castro and manipulated photographs of the
detainee facility at Guantánamo Bay, was inspired by her study
of Cuba's medical system during a Duke Academic Deans Summer Research
Fellowship in June 2004. It will be on display in the Bryan Center
for two years as part of a new program sponsored by the Cipriano
Arts Fund, offering grants to a few students each semester.
In future fall and spring semesters, until the fund is out of money,
students will be able to propose art projects to a committee, which
will then choose two to three applicants to receive the grant.
Pomerantz and Liza Bishop, now a senior, were the spring 2006 recipients
of the grant.
In the essay accompanying her piece, Pomerantz writes, "As
an American, I have taken certain basic human rights for granted.
Cuba was my first encounter with a denial of such fundamental rights.
While feeling frustrated and confused by these restricted freedoms,
I became enamored with the country and its people." By juxtaposing
the pictures of Castro with those from Guantánamo Bay, her aim
is not to single out the Cuban leader for criticism, she says,
but rather to suggest "the hypocrisy of the American government
in denouncing the Cuban government with self-satisfaction."
Elaborating on her Warholesque rendition of Castro's image, Pomerantz
says, "through the pop-art reproduction of Fidel's face, I
am commenting on the restrictive, abusive nature of his dictatorship.
I used the medium of pop art because it allows for creativity and
conveys the power of Fidel's face."
The photographs from Guantánamo Bay have been stretched, further
suggesting a distortion of American ideals in the reality that
is Guantánamo. They also imply a reduction in U.S. stature as its
global reach has stretched its resources and increased its contact,
for good and bad, with others.
Pomerantz says that "each photograph emphasizes feelings of
entrapment and restrictions by foregrounding barbed wire, fences,
and watchtowers. Just like the Cuban people, the detainees at Guantánamo
are being denied truth, free will, and choice in the name of national
security." She closes her accompanying essay with two questions: "What
should Americans demand in terms of American anti-terrorist policy?
What does our democracy stand for?"
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