Brian Maguire
American Hero (In memory of Rachel Corrie) by Brian Maguire
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The contemporary Irish artist, Brian Maguire, has generously donated 40 Limited Edition prints of ‘American Hero’ (In memory of Rachel Corrie), to Sadaka. If you would like to own one of these limited edition prints, please contact:
The Printmakers Gallery,
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Brian Maguire
Brian Maguire is an artist who has worked over the past 30 years on human rights subjects in Ireland and in the Americas. He has spent a good part of this time teaching in prisons both at home and abroad.
He has delivered projects in Brazil with Casa Da Cultura - a child-centred presentation of Favela life which was shown in the 25th Sao Paulo Bienal. He presented the show 'When Love is buried in the Attic' in Cork in 2003 which dwelt with the USA’s use of armed force during the past 10 years.
In 2008 the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin showed his 'Notes from the War on the Poor' which was concerned with illegal acts against Democratic States and the whole scale trafficking of workers for profit by most of the civilized world. His work is collected in Irish and European museums. The most recent acquisition was by the Texas Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Art which acquired the lithograph Brian made of a lynching of a black man in Chicago.
The lithographic print 'The Killing of Rachel Corrie' is based on a drawing Brian made in 2003 which was first exhibited in Cork.
Rachel Corrie
Rachel Corrie was a 23 year old woman from Olympia. the capital city of Washington in the USA who was killed by an Israeli Army Caterpillar D9R Bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003, while non violently protesting against the demolition of the home of a Palestinian family.
While in college, Rachel joined the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace which is a broad coalition of local people opposed to the US government’s policy on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Rachel’s sister Sarah, the September 11, 2001 terror attacks pushed Rachel into political activism. She wanted ‘to find out what was going on in the world, especially in the Middle East’. She studied Arabic and began meeting with peace activists, including former Israeli soldiers. She wanted to understand America's role in the Middle East’. Rachel became a pacifist and pluralist and her views were informed by growing up in a Christian family with Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim in-laws.
Rachel Corrie joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), founded in 2001, with the aim of seeking people worldwide to help with their protests against the Israeli military in the West Bank. Using nonviolent resistance tactics, the organisation seeks to pressure Israel and the Israeli Army (IDF) into stopping its occupation of Palestinian lands. Among the methods used are to violate Israeli curfews imposed on Palestinian areas, to remove roadblocks placed by the IDF to isolate one village from another, and to block military vehicles like tanks and bulldozers.
Rachel Corrie went to Rafah in the Gaza Strip in January 2003 and received two days of nonviolent resistance training to assist in ISM activities. She was horrified at the amount of destruction she found there. Homes were destroyed and people detained and killed on a daily basis. Rachel recorded what she observed and felt in emails and letters to her family. In one email she wrote, ‘Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can’t. People can’t get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can’t get home’ Yet through all of this, she found that her presence was welcome, as when she wrote ‘Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom….Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me’.
For the past five years, Rachel’s parents have been engaged in an ongoing civil lawsuit in the Israeli courts in the hope the military will be found liable for Rachel’s death and that the case will also challenge the Israeli government’s policy of impunity toward its soldiers. For further information on the Corrie Family Lawsuit vs. Caterpillar, Inc. 3/05-9/07 you can visit the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice at: http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/projects/delegations
Brian Maguire is an artist who has worked over the past 30 years on human rights subjects in Ireland and in the Americas. He has spent a good part of this time teaching in prisons both at home and abroad.
He has delivered projects in Brazil with Casa Da Cultura - a child-centred presentation of Favela life which was shown in the 25th Sao Paulo Bienal. He presented the show 'When Love is buried in the Attic' in Cork in 2003 which dwelt with the USA’s use of armed force during the past 10 years.
In 2008 the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin showed his 'Notes from the War on the Poor' which was concerned with illegal acts against Democratic States and the whole scale trafficking of workers for profit by most of the civilized world. His work is collected in Irish and European museums. The most recent acquisition was by the Texas Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Art which acquired the lithograph Brian made of a lynching of a black man in Chicago.
The lithographic print 'The Killing of Rachel Corrie' is based on a drawing Brian made in 2003 which was first exhibited in Cork.
Rachel Corrie
Rachel Corrie was a 23 year old woman from Olympia. the capital city of Washington in the USA who was killed by an Israeli Army Caterpillar D9R Bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003, while non violently protesting against the demolition of the home of a Palestinian family.
Rachel Corrie joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), founded in 2001, with the aim of seeking people worldwide to help with their protests against the Israeli military in the West Bank. Using nonviolent resistance tactics, the organisation seeks to pressure Israel and the Israeli Army (IDF) into stopping its occupation of Palestinian lands. Among the methods used are to violate Israeli curfews imposed on Palestinian areas, to remove roadblocks placed by the IDF to isolate one village from another, and to block military vehicles like tanks and bulldozers.
Rachel Corrie went to Rafah in the Gaza Strip in January 2003 and received two days of nonviolent resistance training to assist in ISM activities. She was horrified at the amount of destruction she found there. Homes were destroyed and people detained and killed on a daily basis. Rachel recorded what she observed and felt in emails and letters to her family. In one email she wrote, ‘Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can’t. People can’t get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can’t get home’ Yet through all of this, she found that her presence was welcome, as when she wrote ‘Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom….Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me’.
For the past five years, Rachel’s parents have been engaged in an ongoing civil lawsuit in the Israeli courts in the hope the military will be found liable for Rachel’s death and that the case will also challenge the Israeli government’s policy of impunity toward its soldiers. For further information on the Corrie Family Lawsuit vs. Caterpillar, Inc. 3/05-9/07 you can visit the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice at: http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/projects/delegations