War and conflict profoundly shape the lives of those who experience them. This forum will look at the way these influences remain on the record in photographs and textiles and discuss issues of their interpretation.

Sue Andrews will discuss the spoken and unspoken narratives associated with a small blanket made from human hair which, as an object of personal mourning and collective memory, forms part of the Holocaust exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum. Sue is a School Visitor at the School of Cultural Inquiry.

Anne Brennan’s presentation concerns an extraordinary archive of photographic portraits of men involved in perpetrating pogroms on Jewish communities during the Russian Civil War in 1919.  Essentially self portraits, these images open up the complex relationships between victims and perpetrators during the Civil War period. Anne is Head of the Art Theory Workshop at the School of Art

Nigel Lendon talks about interpreting the narratives embedded in Afghan carpets made since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Who is speaking? What are they saying? To whom are they addressing their stories? Nigel is an Affiliate Fellow with the RSHA and is working with Tim Bonyhady on a history of the Afghan war carpet tradition.