Echos of Deception

Description

Artist Notes

This piece of work centres on the killing of journalists in Gaza. It was created following the deliberate attack by Israeli forces on Anas al-Sharif in Gaza, and it conveys the message of bloodshed and the international media's complicity. The depiction of forced silence is striking, while the red colour symbolises the violence and brutality of Israeli colonial settler power. I aimed to create a piece that evokes emotion and carries the memory and weight of an ongoing trauma. The storm takes the form of a sun, representing a living catastrophe that is spreading.

Preservation Notes

MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION Physical mixed-media painting and collage. The medium is recorded as acrylic and mixed media with carbon and burned Swedish newspaper on aquarelle fine-grain paper. The materials record burned newspaper ashes and carbon, acrylic, and newspaper articles. Recorded dimensions are 30 x 20 cm; see the verification section regarding the exact proportions. Recorded year 2023. Located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Construction is therefore a fine-grain watercolour paper support carrying acrylic passages, adhered or embedded newspaper fragments, and burned newspaper ash and carbon worked into the surface. The use of Swedish newsprint places the material source alongside the Sweden-based scanning of this collection. No physical examination has been carried out and no condition claim is made here. CONSERVATION REQUIREMENTS This work carries the highest handling risk class in the collection, because it combines three vulnerable elements on a single support. ASH AND CARBON, FRIABLE MEDIA: Burned newspaper ash and carbon are loose, unconsolidated media. They are not bound into the paint film and can be dislodged by contact, air movement, static, or vibration. The work must be framed under glazing with a spacer or deep mount so that nothing contacts the surface. It must never be transported face-down, never stacked, and never subjected to vibration. Do not attempt to dust or clean the surface under any circumstances; ash cannot be replaced once lost. A conservator should assess whether consolidation is advisable, weighing the real risk that a consolidant will alter the matte, light-absorbing quality that the ash provides. AQUARELLE PAPER SUPPORT: Fine-grain watercolour paper is vulnerable to cockling, edge tears, and creasing. Store and display flat, never rolled. Window-mount with acid-free, lignin-free board and hinge with Japanese tissue and starch paste. Do not dry-mount and do not use pressure-sensitive tape at any point. Handle by the mount rather than the sheet. NEWSPAPER COLLAGE: Newsprint is an acidic commercial stock never intended to last, and will continue to yellow, embrittle, and migrate acid into adjacent paper and paint. Assessment by a paper conservator is recommended. Any lifting edges at collage overlaps should be consolidated before handling or framing, working with extreme care given the friable ash on adjacent areas. ENVIRONMENT: Stable relative humidity and temperature, out of direct sunlight, UV-filtering glazing for both display and storage. Saturated reds, yellows, and oranges are the passages most at risk of fading. Burned and carbonised areas are chemically stable in colour but physically fragile, so the threat to them is mechanical rather than photochemical. DIGITAL RECORD The original capture was scanned in Sweden as a TIFF master in high, medium, and low resolution variants. The medium and low resolution variants are held outside this archive. CURRENT ASSET: TIFF master, 10164 x 7185 pixels, 209.0 MB. Filename FullEchosofDeceptionAlijila.tif. Uploaded 2026-09-09. This record now holds the full-resolution TIFF master, uploaded without conversion. It replaces the previous derivative (JPEG, 680 x 480 pixels), which was rejected as unfit for reproduction or study. The master carries approximately 224 times the pixel information of the file it replaces. Effective scan resolution: approximately 860 to 912 DPI measured against the recorded physical dimensions, roughly three times the 300 DPI archival standard. This is the highest scan resolution recorded anywhere in this collection, exceeding Pyramids of Survival at approximately 595 DPI, which previously held that position. At this resolution the individual burned and ashed areas are resolvable at grain level, which is significant for a work whose meaning rests on the destruction of newsprint. Maximum reproduction size at 300 DPI: 33.9 x 24.0 inches (86.0 x 60.8 cm), roughly three times the physical dimensions of the work on each axis. At 200 DPI, suitable for viewing at distance, it will carry 50.8 x 35.9 inches (129.1 x 91.2 cm). Status: this record meets and exceeds archival standard. No rescan required. The reproduction blocker previously recorded against this work is cleared. DELIVERY NOTE: At 209.0 MB this is now the largest asset in the archive, ahead of Pyramids of Survival at 202.7 MB, and TIFF is not a browser-native format. The master should be treated as the preservation copy only. Any website, catalogue, or print-proofing use should draw derivatives through Sanity's image transformation pipeline rather than serving the master file directly. PRESERVATION SIGNIFICANCE: Given that the ash medium is physically fragile and irreplaceable, this master carries unusual weight as a surrogate. It is the only record of the surface as it stands in 2026, and it should be treated as evidence of condition at this date against which future loss can be measured.

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