Casey's Pawns - Portable Protest
Date:
2006
Ref:
0316
Materials:
50 military combat suits, gold foil silkscreen print, leather, felt, wooden head pieces, Lambda colour photographs of the performance staged at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2004.
Dimensions:
Installation comprised of 50 suspended suits, dimensions variable
Exhibition history:
2007 Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland; 11th Prague Quadrennial of Performance and Theatre, Prague, Czech Republic; 2006 Centraal Museum Utrecht, Holland; Franco Sofiantino Gallery, Turin, Italy; 2004 5th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; 2004 Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
Courtesy:
Lucy + Jorge Orta and Collection Luigi Franco, Turin
In 2006, the fifty gold-printed combat suits first created for Casey’s Pawns performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004 were reconfigured as a installation for the 5th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.
Removed from the bodies of the performers, the empty military uniforms retain an unsettling human presence. Suspended together, their hoods and graphic insignia evoke absent, anonymous bodies — soldiers, prisoners and casualties — transforming the original silent protest into a haunting collective memorial.
The presentation held particular resonance in Gwangju, a city marked by the May 18 Democratic Uprising of 1980 and its subsequent significance as a symbol of resistance to authoritarian rule and the struggle for democracy and human rights (전남광주통합특별시(구)광주광역시). In this context, Portable Protest extended its reflection on war, obedience and violence beyond the specific events in Iraq, towards a broader meditation on political repression, collective resistance and peace.