ali vassal | Billboards for what not to do.

Mixed media on wood frame and glass
47.62cm X 57.78cm (18.75” X 22.75”)

Āghā-Soltān’s bloody, panicked last moments, captured by a mobile-phone camera and uploaded to the Internet, turned into probably the most widely witnessed death in human history.

Time

Time magazine wrote that the murder of Nedā Āghā-Soltān was “probably the most widely witnessed death in human history.” On June 20 Nedā was shot in the chest while observing a protest of the outcome of the 2009 Iranian presidential election. The shooter, Abbas Kargar Javid, was a pro-government member of the Basij Militia. Hamid Panahi, the music teacher who was with her at the time of her death stated, “She couldn’t stand the injustice of it. All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted.”

I’m not drawn to Nedā because she is a poster girl for the Iranian Green Movement. According to those who knew her she had no interest in politics.

Nedā was an underground singer and musician. Her name means voice. Like a lot of artists she didn’t fit in. She had left her studies from Islamic Azad University over pressure on her style, or specifically, the way she dressed. She had divorced her husband for whatever reasons. She was strong willed.

At the time of her death she was engaged to Caspian Makan, a photojournalist. Now she’s iconic like Joan of Arc or Che Guevara: an advertisement for martyrdom.

I remember her more like the poet Garcia Lorca who was murdered during the Spanish Civil War. Lorca’s death was not recorded with a smartphone like the other 34 Iranian protesters who died the day Nedā was murdered in Tehran. Like Lorca, Neda was not a guerrilla or a revolutionary, a soldier or a policeman, or anyone who believes the problems of humanity can be solved with a bullet.

When I first viewed the video of her death on youtube I wanted to annihilate the man or men or armies of men who were responsible. But I’m not a killer. I just paint on random objects. Later I rewatched the video to witness the exact moment she disappears from us and to possibly understand where she had gone. What I saw was her eyes roll from a place of terror into the nothing of her cranium. When the irises reappeared I saw two black dots deeper than shadow, the eyes of Kali.

Mixed media on particleboard
134cm X 49.53cm (52.75” X 19.5”)

Civilized nations look with horror upon offers or rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

The United States Army Lieber Code of 1863

When Seal Team Six killed Osama Bin Laden in May of 2011 no one I talked to had one moment of pause that their tax dollars had funded a mafia hit.

The United States Army Lieber Code of 1863 states, Civilized nations look with horror upon offers or rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

After the death of Bin Laden I was skimming through Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Images and came across the Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Prize winning photo. But instead of the face of the grimacing soldier, the shooter General Loan and the victim, Nguyễn Văn Lém, I saw the faces of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden.

The title of the painting, “We know who you are, fucker”, was taken from graffiti seen by Eddie Adams scrawled on the bathroom wall of Les Trois Continents, a pizza parlor owned by Loan when he emigrated to the U.S. after the Vietnam War. His past discovered, Loan went into retirement.

The victim, Lém, had been guilty of war crimes yet the murder horrified people all over the world. Now no one blinks an eye.