The
Renaissance
Society

"Seige of Khartoum, 1884" appropriates iconic images from the Iraq war (such as the capture of Saddam, and the tearing down of his statue throughout public squares in Iraq) and combines them with archival news texts from earlier points in history.  The texts come from the archives of The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph (UK), and The Times (UK).  The articles span from the period of high empire (late 19th century) to the present day.  They include Winston Churchill's journalistic writings while battling Mahdists in Sudan (1898), British attempts to suppress the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya (1950s), and anonymous American journalists' depictions of the conquest of the Philippines (1920s), Vietnam (1960s) and Panama (1990s).  The project traces the narratives of Empire at work in the present moment. The 27 photo-collages map the narrative arc of earlier colonial wars of conquest and reveal the in way which the Iraq war and the War on Terror conform to this predetermined script.