07.17.08

"Freedom of Speech"

Runs through Aug. 22 at FLATFILEgalleries, 217 N. Carpenter; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday

Benjamin June's "Iraq Suicide Attack Pillow Project," which memorializes the victims of increasingly frequent insurgent bombings, engulfs its audience in the mounting body count in the Middle East. He throws our comfortable associations with the humble pillow back in our face, each one marking an incident. Recalling this last, difficult year feels claustrophobic, and we can only hope, in vain, that the shelf space reserved for this summer remains empty. Complementing this revelatory work is Wafaa Bilal's '"Virtual Jihadi, the night of Bush Capturing," a POV computer war game reimagining the mass- marketed "Quest for Saddam" with American targets.

Original article here