Emily Prince

Emily Prince (b. 1981, Gold Run, CA)
American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but Not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghans)
2004 to the present
Pencil on color coded vellum
Project comprised of 3,500 drawings
Each image: 4 x 3 in. / 10.2 x 7.6 cm.
Overall: 234 x 546 in. / 594 x 1389 cm.
Courtesy of the Artist and Kent Gallery, New York


Notes:
November 1, 2006
“…and to answer your other question from yesterday - I am in the midst of catching up with portraits of people who've died in October…always just catching up.
EP 2006


In her ongoing project, American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghans), Emily Prince seeks to make a pointed political statement by offering a detailed rendering of the human cost of war. The project serves as a memorial, containing individual, hand drawn portraits of the United States casualties of the War in Iraq. The graphite drawings are derived from wallet-sized portraits that the families of military personnel posted on an internet memorial site (www.militarycity.com). Each portrait is drawn on 4 x 3 inch sheets of colored papers which correspond to the race of the soldier who has died in the Iraq conflict. The colored paper is meant to give the viewer an immediate sweep of the racial demographics of those who have lost their lives. Each sheet of paper includes the portrait of the soldier which is posted on the website as well as the soldier’s biographical information including their name, hometown/state, age, date of death, and other personal, distinguishable facts. Those soldiers on the website with no corresponding image are represented with an empty rectangle.

All fifty states as well as the United States territories are included in the project. Prince monitors the website multiple times a week and meticulously collects all of the information about each soldier and transfers it to a journal. She then creates the drawings almost immediately after the information has been collected. She keeps the drawing catalogued in her small studio where each one receives an envelope labeled with the name of the soldier and their town/state. These envelopes go into archival boxes and are organized by state, and then alphabetically by last name within the state. While exhibited, the piece is constantly augmented. Using only gridlines, Prince creates a map of the United States on the gallery wall and each portrait is hung in correspondence to the soldier’s hometown location. White pins distinguish all of the causalities that have occurred prior to the opening of an exhibition and red pins distinguish those that have taken place during the time in which the piece is installed. As of November 6, 2006, 3,016 soldiers are portrayed in her memorial.

The numbers kept coming up in the daily reports. Five here, fourteen there, one day after another. And then the growing figure mounting over a thousand. Peripherally it was ever-present, but still only an abstraction. It was no longer enough to know how many. I needed to see pictures of them, to familiarize myself just a tiny bit more with what was happening far from my warm home. And it really isn’t much. It too is a mere summary, just one more step beyond bare numbers.

Yet for me it is something. It means spending time with each one. It is looking into their eyes to see who is now gone. It is following the line of their brow and trying to perceive the expression there. It is a visual and visceral exploration of these individuals by way of their faces. It is my own eyes and my hand tracing out some very slight acquaintance with what’s occurring.

As an investigation it is little, and it is incomplete. It addresses only the Americans who have died. Neither the Iraqis nor the Afghanis are pictured. However, this gap in my own representation does not symbolize any deliberate or meaningful exclusion. I feel deep sadness for the people of these nations.

EP 2006

Emily Prince is a graduate of Stanford University with a double major in Fine Art and Psychology. She is currently enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of California, Berkeley. The Iraq war officially began March 20, 2003 however Prince did not conceive of her project until November 3, 2004; one day after President George W. Bush was elected to his second term in office. She was troubled by the human cost on both the American and Iraqi ends. The number was not enough information, it was just and abstraction for a situation that deemed elaboration.