Garling Gauge

Suicide Bombing As Western Art

Western culture gets bombed

America’s foreign policy decisions and focus on the Middle East is changing our culture.

Stopped at gunpoint in Logan International Airport in Boston, MIT student Star Simpson was arrested for wearing “fake bomb” art, consisting of a sweatshirt with wires, a battery, a circuit board, and lights. “Socket to me” and “Course VI” were written on the back, referring to MIT’s major in electrical engineering and computer science. She was charged with disturbing the peace and possessing a hoax device.

Simpson’s arrest is but another indication of evolving American culture absorbing and reflecting the effects of our foreign policy, terrorism, the Iraq war, and Middle East turmoil.

[flv]http://garlinggauge.com/videos/foxbomb.flv[/flv]
Fox News appears shocked that art would reflect reality

Just north of Washington, University of Calgary student Broadbent designed a suicide vest as a commentary on symbolism and current events. Excerpts from the Gauntlet:

“[This project is] about creating an object, an idea that is worth discussing,” explains Broadbent. “There are some statements built into this, but my first objective was to deal with relevant, current-day topics like the politics of the time, and to do it in a way that causes dialogue”

As it involves issues of race and religion, suicide bombing is also an extremely sensitive issue.

“I know that when you are dealing with an issue like this, that it is obviously racially sensitive,” he says. “But to raise it this way, is to raise it in a way that is not directed at any one ethnic group or any one religion specifically. I understand the sensitivity around this and I understand this is a serious topic. This has never at any time been a joke; it’s been a pretty serious endeavour.”

The Vest Chris Tait / the Gauntlet

Wearing a vest of her own, Suicide Bomber Barbie unites the extremes of Western culture’s perverse aesthetic idealism with tragic desperation. Excerpts from the Culture Net:

Bombs aren’t her only accessory. A bag with metal fragments finishes the look.

Simon Tyszko’s Suicide Bomber Barbie conflates Western commodification with Palestinian desperation. Religious and capitalist dogmas struggle within Barbie’s idealised form, in an artwork of potent incongruity. It is a work whose political stridency is tempered by a well placed humour.

By his appropriation of a consumerist icon, the artist creates an emphatic subversion of this process, the artist seeking to help create the conditions of political change.

A recent interview with a nine year old Palestinian girl had her saying she had wanted to be a doctor, but could now no longer study or sleep at night, and now only wanted to be a martyr. Tyszko says of her that ‘she has effectively bought the notion of suicide bombing as a lifestyle choice – it has become aspirational, an off the shelf peer led option.’

Suicide Bomber Barbie draws attention to certain kinds of moral, emotional, and political equivalence, which uncomfortably exist within the nationalistic and political systems that contain them. That these systems are dysfunctional, goes without saying.

Sadly, martyr Barbie was constructed half a decade ago, evidence of a historical influx of suicide bombing art. The infusion of suicide bombings in Western culture leading to the recent arrest of Star Simpson is evidently showing its effect.

A year after Suicide Bomber Barbie, the Greek newspaper Ta Nea reported on an art show glorifying a successful female suicide bomber who attacked a Jerusalem supermarket.

Caption quote of artist Alexandros Psychoulis: “I am trying to get into the psychology of a person who is preparing the vests which women wear in suicide attacks.”

Mary Adamopoulou explains the story behind it (edited):

First scene. A pregnant woman is pushing a cart in the supermarket. Next to her, knitted women’s vests with a lot of outside pockets like the ones worn by Palestinian women in suicide attacks are spread out. The apparent image of tranquility and peace stops when one glances further down. In the second scene:a blown up supermarket - shelves, products, human parts have become one.

A real story was the motivation for “Body Milk” a title that brings to mind both female cosmetics and human milk, according to Alexandros Psychoulis: that of an 18 year old Palestinian girl, Ayat Al Akra, who carried out a suicide bomb attack last March in a supermarket in Israel.

An army of women who in the past had carried out similar actions had chosen the supermarket as their place of action, whereas men primarily preferred cafes and buses. Why were women therefore choosing the market to express their greatest protest?

I observed my female friends. They feel at home and complete in the supermarket. I came to the conclusion that the supermarket is a woman’s space.

Perhaps because by her nature woman is a provider and the supermarket operates like a super female provider, magnifying woman’s nature. If she therefore blows herself up there, perhaps she will feel like she is magnifying her existence and her act.

Back on the US front, political cartoons have often been first to express the nation’s zeitgeist. Suicide bombing is prevalent here as well.

Daryl Cagle - Slate.com

While the West is free to create and publicize art depicting suicide bombing, it does not always go over well. Last year a Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed’s turban as a lit bomb caused outrage in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Palestinian militants burn the Norwegian flag in a Gaza protest

Criticism was also reflected back:

“What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?” -Jordanian journalist

These artworks depicting suicide bombing have a beginning in the areas of the world most affected by them. A year before Suicide Bomber Barbie thought of leaving Ken in a bang, BBC reported that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shut down an art exhibit recreation of a suicide bombing scene.

2001 art exhibition at An-Jajah University

The exhibition, at An-Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus, was organised to mark the first anniversary of the Palestinian intifada.

A security official confirmed that Mr Arafat ordered the early closure of the show which featured a recreation of last month’s attack on a Jerusalem pizzeria.

“The president was gravely disturbed and offended by the images in the exhibit,” the official said.

Star Simpson’s artwork and arrest attest to the cultural infusion of suicide bombing as art and America’s self-created fear of terrorism. While for many suicide bombing is a real physical threat to contend with, our art and culture strongly reflect how our society’s mindset navigates the dangers of the world.

People have a choice as to how to respond to the world around us, including the dangers that we face. Fear can be a tool to gauge potential harm but can also be used as a tool of control, and of this we must be mindful.

FDR’s “The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself” comes to mind.

Listen to it:





19 year old MIT student Star Simpson & a close up of her artwork


What does the expression of suicide bombing in Western and American art mean, and how should we respond?


Suicide bombing is a sad and horrific aspect of human civilization, one that moderates, rationalists, and atheists can help mitigate, and one that America helps incite through an often dishonorable foreign policy.


When mass amounts of people do something crazy it is important to understand the influences behind that behavior. [flv]http://garlinggauge.com/videos/blowback.flv[/flv]Blowback. Many people get it. Many Republicans don’t.

I’ll let someone else summarize:

“There is one simple way for the United States to decrease very significantly, the plague of terror in the world, and that is just to stop supporting and participating in it.”

-Noam Chomsky, May 2002

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