The object is yarn. The subject is war. The exhibit is photography.

Color of Conflict, opening at Susan Hensel Gallery on December 1,  is a collaboration of photographer John Hensel and artist Susan Hensel.

She is always a multimedia artist who seeks narrative, Ms. Hensel has brought the world of fiber art into her studio practice. Color of Conflict is a show of photographs that wrest the meaning from a series of yarns that Susan has spun.  These yarns, containing army toys and the colors and forms of armed conflict, can be knitted.  But their true horror is revealed in the photographic display.

In the art world, one talks about transgression. Transgression can be loosely defined as breaking expected boundaries or expectations. Yarn is expected to be soft, warm, useful, at times even life-saving. It is often associated with leisure, craft, and women’s work. Rarely is it thought of as an object, a material, or a subject of fine art. In this project, yarn paradoxically uses its traditional softness to express a hard/harsh/violent reality. It uses its allusions to its life-saving properties( warmth, padding, protecting) as a field of discussion about war and death. It uses a “women’s art” to discuss a “man’s pursuit.”

It took a man, photographer John Hensel, to bring the meaning to light.