Camouflage and exposure ======================= * Vivian Tors Canadian General Romeo Dallaire's heroic efforts to prevent the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and his subsequent battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the powerful subject matter of *UNdone: Dallaire/Rwanda*, an ambitious cycle of paintings by Toronto-based artist Gertrude Kearns. Kearns, whose earlier work about the United Nations' mission in Somalia is now in the collection of the Canadian War Museum, presented *UNdone* last fall at the Propeller Visual Arts Centre in Toronto. *UNdone* consists of ten large-scale works painted in sign enamel on camouflage fabric: six head-and-shoulders portraits of General Dallaire, and four monumental figural works depicting scenes of the massacre. ![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/168/9/1164/F1.medium.gif) [Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/168/9/1164/F1) Figure. **Gertrude Kearns, 2002.** *Mission: Camouflage.* Enamel and acrylic on nylon, 295 cm (max) х440 cm. Photo by: Courtesy of the artist ![Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/168/9/1164/F2.medium.gif) [Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/168/9/1164/F2) Figure. **Gertrude Kearns, 2001.** *Dallaire #6*. Sign enamel and oil on nylon, 180 cm х 155 cm. Photo by: Courtesy of the artist Kearns evokes the sustained nightmare of Dallaire's Rwandan experience through an intricate combination of formal and symbolic devices. Her approach invites the viewer to respond to the work on both an emotional and an intellectual level. Its impact is felt most immediately through the enormous scale of the paintings and through the emotionally charged brushwork, vividly suggesting both Dallaire's psychological torment and the chaos of the carnage he witnessed. Additional layers of meaning are achieved through an extensive vocabulary of references and allusions, extending even to the titles of the works and the spatial relationships between them on the gallery walls. Kearns painted the series of portraits of General Dallaire to correspond in number with the six stages of PTSD.1 In *Dallaire #1*, she portrays Dallaire as the resolute mission commander, sporting the blue UN beret. With utmost care and compassion, she moves on to convey the profound erosion of Dallaire's power and psychological state through broadly exaggerated changes in his expression and gestures. In *Dallaire #6*, the final portrait, she portrays the general as physically and emotionally nullified. His face is no longer visible, but the contours of his cheeks and the strong lines of his chin still reveal his identity. His hands are raised in front of his face in a gesture of both defeat and supplication. A prominent red, cross-shaped mark bisects his forehead: an overt reference to the martyred Christ. The portraits are executed in the simple, schematic style of comic-book art. Dallaire's features are rendered with the strong-jawed, macho stoicism of an action hero, perhaps to contrast his experiences with the exploits of a comic-book hero in a comic-book world. This approach allows Kearns to subvert the notion that a GI Joe or Superman can single-handedly save the world, emphasizing the impossible demands of Dallaire's mission in Rwanda. Ultimately, Kearns projects the sad truth that in real life the good guys, however good they may be, don't necessarily vanquish the bad guys. The figural works are executed in the same schematic style as the portraits but with a much more complex composition to evoke the horrifying chaos of the slaughter. They are carefully placed on the gallery walls to create links with the portraits. We read the torment on the general's face — and, like him, we witness the scenes that cause his torment. Murdered victims lie in a brutally careless tangle underneath a UN vehicle in *Mission: Camouflage*, the largest piece in the exhibition. The larger-than-life scale of the figures magnifies the extent of their suffering and degradation. Absolutely no sense of their individuality remains. They have been reduced to a horrifying sum of their body parts, ground into the Rwandan mud by the tires of a UN truck. Kearn's use of the camouflage fabric as the ground for her paintings provides the underlying physical and metaphoric structure for *UNdone*. The figures and forms in the paintings emerge and recede in and out of the camouflage pattern, creating visual confusion to suggest the disequilibrium induced by PTSD and the random and insidious way it alters the sufferer's perceptions. It also suggests the enormous deception perpetrated on not only the Rwandan victims of the genocide, but also on General Dallaire and his men by the UN in its paradoxical role as a trained, but unarmed, “quasi-military” force, to use Kearns' own term. *UNdone: Dallaire/Rwanda* is a hard-hitting body of work. It is best resolved in the figural works, which convey the indescribable chaos of the 1994 genocide without invoking specific individuals, thereby transforming them into far more universal statements on the tragedy of human suffering. By contrast, because Dallaire's face in the portraits remains so highly recognizable, it is hard to ignore the feeling of intrusion into what in fact are his particular and personal experiences. In her close scrutiny Kearns runs the risk of objectifying her subject. I am reminded of late 19th and early 20th century photographic case studies of patients afflicted with innumerable cruel conditions, their exposed and vulnerable faces peering out from vintage prints, their identities forever defined by their infirmities.2 The Dallaire portraits become their modern equivalent: a permanent, visual case study of PTSD. Given that the historical context of *UNdone* and General Dallaire's very public struggle to come to terms with his experiences are still in the recent past, perhaps it is impossible to avoid this effect. Kearns herself anticipated it in creating this work; as she explains, “I didn't want the viewer to need to rely on interpreting and/or knowing events in order to be deeply affected by the final series” (personal communication, 2003). In the end, it is up to time and its merciful capacity to heal wounds to make it so. **Vivian Tors** Visual Artist Ottawa, Ont. ## References 1. 1. Brandsma J, Hyer L. Resolution of traumatic grief in combat veterans. *NCP Clinical Quarterly* 1995;5(2/3). Available: ncptsd.org /publications /cq /v5/n2-3/brandsma.html (accessed 2003 Mar 27). 2. 2. Todkill AM. Anomalies and anonymity. CMAJ 1999;161(4):420. 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