Enduring Freedom

The effects of America’s foreign policy had absorbed artist Roger Morris (REMO) well before the September 11 terror attacks in 2001. Since the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, his ‘Enduring Freedom’ series has explored the often opposing accounts of truth surrounding those events.

This print, ‘Liar’s Number’, refers to an American missile attack on a residential suburb of Baghdad, Iraq, in March 2003. Sixty two civilians were killed. The string of numbers along the bottom of the black military aircraft quotes exactly the code found on a piece of metal retrieved by local Iraqis from the attack. The print was based on a report filed by highly respected journalist Robert Fisk for London’s The Independent newspaper, which confirmed the missile was dropped by US warplanes despite reports made to the contrary by both American and British military spokesmen. Discussing his work in an interview for the Taranaki Daily News in April 2012, Morris said his work explores the ‘truth-lie dichotomy’. “There is another script on the other side of what we’re being told” he says.