April 21, 2010
CT Entertainment/Fox News

'Bearing Witness' At Zilkha Gallery At Wesleyan in Middletown

MIDDLETOWN — The faces are haunting enough. They are of Iraqis who were detained and in some cases tortured at Abu Ghraib and other facilities.

But their stories, which spiral around their faces in swirls and circuitous lines of hand-painted type, can be devastating. "Even they beat up my wife," says one, "and broke my son's leg. He was 11."

Artist Daniel Heyman was in a small room with these men as they told their stories of torture and abuse to their lawyers in Istanbul and Amman. As they spoke through translators, Heyman completed the portraits and took down the testimony verbatim as they spoke. "The words were in the air," he says. "They were completely surrounding us in these rooms.

"It's hard to listen to," Heyman says. "It should be hard to read."

The results in the one-man show "Bearing Witness: Stories from the Front Lines," opening today at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University in Middletown, bring art to the immediacy of reporting, often filling gaps where journalism failed.

Heyman's sense of urgency is informs the accompanying catalog, which also includes essays and testimony.

The parallels to journalism are pushed in the largest work in the show, which was imagined after Heyman saw the monumental corner of the Wesleyan gallery, where it now stands. Like other works that present etchings printed on plywood, the images on this one were suggested by a U.S. war zone photographer who complained that his work was censored before it was sent back. The title of this piece: "When the Photographers are Blinded, the Eagles' Wings are Clipped."

Heyman, who teaches at Princeton University and Rhode Island School of Design, recently was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has gone on to paint the faces and words of the poor, incarcerated men in Philadelphia in much the same manner and plans to document stories of American female soldiers who were taken advantage of by men in the war zones.

His raison d'etre is scrawled on the margins of one of his portraits: "The important thing is to reveal these truths."

"Bearing Witness: Stories from the Front Lines" continues at Wesleyan through May 23. Heyman will speak at an opening reception Friday from 5 to 7 p.m. and will host a symposium next month.