This stunning installation of portraits (based on internet snapshot postings) of 44 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat killed in the military campaign in Afghanistan prior to January 2007 is part of Tobey C. Anderson’s The New American Century Project. The haunting character of his rendering of war dead is amplified by the artist’s use of fluorescent paint: exhibited under black lights, the installation makes reference to the source of the images and to the pervasive screen-glow that is the mechanism of global information flows. Furthermore, Anderson’s memorialisation of the dead highlights, by contrast, the reluctance of governments to represent the suffering and loss that attend armed conflict. In a context of debate regarding the Canada’s military commitment in Afghanistan, he continues to document the accumulating toll of the war.

The title of Anderson’s overarching project is drawn from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a Washington, DC think tank that in 2000 authored a blueprint for US pre-eminence in the world. Anderson’s paintings of victims of war – including portraits of dead “terrorists” and civilians — and conflict zones address the erosion of public control over government and the technologies of war. KIA_CA_Afghanistan is one of several works responding to military conflict that have entered the Art Centre collection in recent years.

Tobey C. Anderson was a former Kingston artist, he had an enormous impact on this community during his tenure at St. Lawrence College and as founder of Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre.