War focus of new art installation

elin o’Hara slavick won’t capitalize her name.

But for slavick, a UNC professor and visual artist, her creative capitalization choices aren’t nearly as important as the subjects addressed in her work.

slavick’s latest projects — “Hiroshima: After Aftermath,” and “Protesting Cartography: Places the U. S. Has Bombed” — are part of an exhibition titled “Aftermath” currently on display in the lobby of the FedEx Global Education Center.

“This exhibition encourages thought about a tough topic many of us often choose to ignore,” said Laura Griest, outreach coordinator for the FedEx Global Center.

“elin’s work forces us to see the implications of war and the lives that are touched.”

Both “Protesting Cartography” and “Hiroshima” have been shown numerous times across the United States, as well as in Cuba and Holland.

Born into an activist family, slavick grew up marching in protests and anti-war rallies.

She carried her pacifism into adulthood, transferring her street experiences into paintings of maps that portray the countries around the world that the United States has bombed.

The idea is to get people to think about maps in a different light, slavick said.

“They don’t show you how to get anywhere,” she said. “Because war destroys the land and the landscape and the border.”

In “Protesting Cartography,” slavick’s paintings illustrate bombed sites and cities in an abstract fashion.

Each painting uses many colors to captivate the audience’s interest and entice them to read the informational plaque accompanying each one, slavick said.

This abstraction —lines, ink blots and watercolor splotches that cover more traditional topographical information like roads, elevation and place names — brings the viewer an awareness of the ways in which bombs can alter a landscape beyond normal recognition.

“Hiroshima: After Aftermath” includes a series of photographs that slavick took during the three months she lived in Hiroshima.

But slavick makes it clear that the point of her art is not simply to create pretty pictures about terrible events.

“I make art that addresses serious issues— from labor and leisure, familial dynamics, the body, gender and sexuality to cartography, global economy, travel and tourism, media and war,” slavick said.

slavick said she hopes to encourage people to see the “Aftermath” exhibition in order to think more critically about the effects of bombing, she said.

“Go out and make a difference,” she said. “The Civil Rights movement didn’t happen from cynicism — it was people who wanted to make change.”

Continuing her life of conscious activism, slavick will speak on the larger context of her work in a presentation on Nov. 3 at the FedEx Center.

UNC Art Department Chair Jim Hirschfield said he thinks it’s beneficial to have art available for students to observe on campus.

“We are an educational institution and visual literacy is as important as any other course of study,” he said.

Hirschfield said he gains a lot when looking at slavick’s work. FedEx outreach coordinator Griest agreed.

“Overall, I feel the work is beautiful and quite profound,” Griest said.

Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.