Alloy of Love by Dario Robleto

Today I saw the exhibit Alloy of Love by Dario Robleto at the Frye Art Museum. It woke me up. To the reality of the war we are in currently- the PTSD suffered by those who awake to alarm clocks which remind them of the bullets once used to kill another. The young men who rave of their courage and ability to blow another's brains out, the belief that there truly is an enemy to be defeated, dissociated from the reality that they have killed a person. The women who decide to cheat on their husbands who are fighting as they are already convinced that their husbands will be cheating on them. 

"The artist spins new narratives out of the vast inventory of our past, utilizing such diverse and unusual materials as melted and pulverized vinyl records, artifacts gleaned from battefields, rare herbs and minerals, and even prehistoric fossils and human bones. Ispired by DJ culture's practice of mixing and sampling, Robleto combines and refashions his materials into poetic artworks that engage nostalgia and history."

This exhibit contained displays of objects reincarnated- pulp from the letters soldiers sent to their lovers before death, human bone dust, dust from the Berlin Wall, dolls crafted by soldiers to comfort themselves while in hospitals healing. His work reminded me of the importance of narrative- of declaring the atrocities of the past in order to examine them head on, feel the effects, and allow ourselves the chaos and anxiety needed to make changes. I don't think that we allow ourselves to feel the chaos and anxiety long enough.