A Veterans Art Engagement Project: 2021-2025
An article that is linked to The Mask - a veteran's story.
It was 6 pm on September 7th, 2021, and the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Cultural Heritage exhibition And Yet We Rise: 20 Years of Reflection and Remembrance of September 11th was opening at the American embassy in London. As the senior curator for the office, it is in my portfolio to design exhibitions on cultural exchange framed within the realms of culture and diplomacy. This project was five years in the making and more difficult than many because of the subject matter and goals. My hope was to capture less than just that one terrible day, and more of healing, forgiveness, and the indomitable human spirit. An incredibly hard task, but one that succeeded by highlighting amazing people on a personal level.
As the crowd moved in and slowly circulated, I watched their every move. As a curator, openings are not only our opportunities to embrace an accomplishment, but just as importantly they represent a time of reflection. So, I watched how the crowd moved, expecting a certain outcome, only to be surprised when I saw another. Beforehand my guess would have been that visitors would have immediately stopped at what I considered the “big-ticket” items. That is, fire men’s jackets from the events of the day, an American flag that hung at Newark airport, or even some large and imposing works from a celebrated artist. Yet I was wrong, and in that moment found myself beginning another journey that turned out to be even more important than the exhibition.
That night, many visitors seemed to find their way to a smaller corner of the exhibition that was not center stage. It featured masks created by American veterans of foreign wars. The more I watched the visitors interact with the masks, the clearer it became there was more to them than met the eye. The masks possessed an honesty and raw emotion that not only matched everything else in the exhibition but surpassed it in many ways. The essence of these objects was the draw, and everyone else felt it too. As all these thoughts coalesced in my brain, I had a light bulb moment that would take me on an even greater journey of self-discovery and learning.
Not soon after the event I found myself doing a deep dive into the world of art therapy, starting the journey that would become the Behind the Mask program. I already knew staff from SUNY Jefferson Community College of Watertown, New York where the mask came from on loan, but the actual process and role of art therapy was unfamiliar. As a lifelong student and professional working in the cultural arts the power of objects has always been my companion, yet this project with its own goals of self-expression and personal growth were new to me. From this background I began to imagine how to transform a piece of the original show into a project to benefit new audiences in similar ways the masks created in Watertown had done for their makers. Transforming a piece of the original show for a new audience that could benefit in equivalent ways the original students and artist had. By the time the program was ready to launch I had over two years of study under my belt and the world of art rehabilitation had found a new adherent in me. Our mask would be both an inner and outer expression of self. Simply put, the outer portion, or face, of the mask was what the veterans believed they showed the world, while the interior was ultimately how they felt about themselves. Powerful emotions distilled into a simple format.
I’ll confess I was nervous before meeting The Not Forgotten veteran cohort and those involved in the program. After all, they were all part of a distinct tribe that I wasn’t a part of. My father is a veteran, and my grandfather too, but I am not. Service for me always took on a different shape. This made me feel like an outsider of sorts and I didn’t quite know how to express my own inspirations and feelings. Or better yet, I wasn’t sure how my personal experiences would be interpreted by this group. Ultimately, I told myself to smile, be myself, and let the art do its thing. That I did understand. Art is a powerful teacher and healer in all its forms.
This is the hard part, putting into words the powerful impression the veterans, and art, left on me. Firstly, the vets accepted me immediately into their group, sharing jokes and anecdotes in a way I was humbled by. The simple truth is I ignored my own first rule of the arts, that is, to let culture speak for itself in all its wonderful simplicity.
This simplicity was expressed through shared loves, hates, sorrows and joys. These universal imperatives are present in peoples across the globe and serve as the greatest trait in cultural diplomacy which, coincidently, can be seen through art engagement and therapy. The veteran’s engagement program shared all these hallmarks, perhaps displayed in a more pronounced way because of the extreme environments that they were found in. Their bonds were forged in high stress environments, almost always starting at a young age, while not given time for reflection until the servicemen and women retire.
Throughout the week we spent together I watched the veterans create their masks, studying the cues they left behind in colours and design. I was struck by what I can only equate to a form of sympathetic magic. That is, their work on the masks was imbued with energy of the veterans themselves, infusing their art with decades of experience and emotion. Universally the art exudes raw and unadulterated emotions; they spoke of love, loss, and both physical and mental scars.
At the program’s conclusion the synergy of the beginnings and endings of the program couldn’t be more obvious to the careful observer. Our originals goals of healing and expression became projected through a window of the veterans’ internal journey using external markers left by the mask that we as a society know how to interpret better then mental health journeys themselves. These physical legacies created in forms of colour and shape leave lasting tributes to better understand the search for a healthy state of mind, reminding us all just what the human experience can be if we free ourselves to let it.
Joseph Angemi Jr.
SENIOR CURATOR, OFFICE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE
U.S. Department of State