Objects at War: Soldier-Artists in Afghanistan

War evokes national desires of supremacy, dominance, financial gain and power; it also activates individual desires for peace, normality, emotional balance and ordinary life, especially among soldiers and veterans. Some soldiers engaged in Afghanistan symbolically escape through their drawings, sketches, watercolors, and oil paintings. They capture in images the soldiers’ longings for peace, visibility and recognition. Their art seeks to rescue the dead and to honor those who did not return, physically and/or psychologically. The texts that accompany the war images in War Artists in Afghanistan: Beyond the Wire (2016) suggest that objects of desire could be banal, but also that those objects and desires become as confusing as the sand that made the difference between friend and foe disappear. In the end, survival undoubtedly became the sole object of desire for some.