Two further artists investigate the combination of the mundane and the communal during a time of war. In Lamia Joreige’s piece Objects of War from 2006, interviewees discuss an object which represented their personal experience of the Lebanese War, in many cases something as simple as a radio or a key. Brought together, these items detail the shared experiences of many through the everyday. Daily life is also the focal point of Steve Mumford’s twelve watercolor sketches; in one, Mumford captures “Iraqi contractors waiting to be paid on a Friday morning FOB Thunder, March 2004″ while another depicts street trading as usual.
While certainly atmospheric, the works included in the first series of rooms are grouped so as to resemble various sci-fi set pieces. The ephemeral glow of Doug Wheeler’s light piece, Untitled (1969), beams like an ambient square sun eclipsed by the congested smog of a sprawling city; Robert Irwin’s almost invisible, acrylic sculptures initially give the impression of an optical glitch but then materialize into alien objects that seem to hover in space; while James Turrell’s colored projections form 3-dimensional prisms which are deceptively ‘real’ in the angular corners of the room.