Through three decades of international and civil war, Afghans have borne witness to disaster by weaving unprecedented images of battle and weaponry into their rugs. This exhibition presents 118 rugs that tell the story of the Afghan world turned upside down.

Afghan weavers depict on their rugs what they see and what matters most to them. And so over three decades of chaos, the customary images of flowers have turned into bullets, or landmines, or hand grenades. Birds have turned into helicopters and fighter jets. Landscapes have filled up with field guns and troop carriers. Sheep and horses have turned into tanks.

But are the war rugs pro-war or anti-war? Whose side are they on?

It is hard to tell what a particular rug is supposed to mean when its history is hidden and its maker is unknown. In the past, the materials and weaving techniques of an oriental rug were a clue to its origin. People of different ethnic groups, in different places, made rugs in different ways. Today four million people from all over Afghanistan have been mixed together in refugee camps, sharing and mixing images and techniques. As a result, the old methods of sorting rugs into categories no longer apply.

What’s left are the rugs themselves – eloquent anonymous documents of catastrophe.

– excerpted from the Curatorial Essay by Max Allen.