American Visionary Art Museum display

Some war rugs (plus a recent salt bag from Herat) plus a couple of Navaho weavings with 9/11 references, at the opening last Friday night at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

War carpets on display at the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary art

… failed to make a point, according to critic Matthew Bown: “some works are coals to Newcastle, a misjudgment of the Moscow context. Afghan carpets featuring airplanes and other military technology have been on sale at Ismailovo Market here for 20 years.”  The carpets in the Biennale may be token representation, perhaps, but (we might ask) where was Bown when war carpets began to appear in markets all around the world 20 years ago? Perhaps Bown missed curator Jean-Martin Hubert’s point, that since the late 80s such artefacts have continued to pose challenges to mainstream art when re-evaluated as works of art, despite such dismissive accounts. See the relevant catalogue page below; click to enlarge it.