Trench art "Tree of Life" at the British Museum

Phoebe Greenwood reports on "Tree of Life," a piece of contemporary trench art from Mozambique which is now on view at the British Museum.

“We used thousands of guns (from Mozambique's civil war) to make the sculpture...Sometimes it’s overwhelming to think about how many lives that represents. Where I come from, we believe in spirits of the dead, and if I look at the sculpture I can see lost children’s souls, I can see their mothers crying for them.”

...In 1997 Sengulane challenged the country’s oldest arts collective, Nucleo del Arte, to use the dismantled guns to “make something to inspire peace”....

“You should look at The Tree and see in it an appeal for a culture of peace around the world,” explains Sengulane, a cross welded from pistol parts hanging from his neck. “We’re making art speak a universal message, one of peace, using instruments of war.”

Trench art, which flourished during the First World War and again during World War II, is a now rather obscure form of folk art from around the world. Generally made from the detritus of war by soldiers and civilians alike, it encompasses an enormous range of objects, both practical and purely decorative. One theme which runs thru the genre is that of turning weapons into peaceful objects: today we see pieces made even during the Great War which literally recite the Bibical passage: "You shall beat your swords into plowshares, and your spears into pruning hooks." Click here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-47-1504992,00.html

For more on trench art in general, see my friend Jane Kimball's site: Click here: Trench Art: An Illustrated History, by Jane Kimball