featuring work by nine international artists: Kamrooz Aram, Huma 

Bhabha, Paolo Chiasera, Matthew Day Jackson, Jen DeNike, Ignacio

Lang, Adam Helms, Rachel Mason and Nebojša Šeric-Shoba. The

exhibition explores an unsettling reality happening today in many of the

world's worst areas of conflict -- the emergence of the contemporary

warlord. 

Warlords are powerful and dangerous figures, perpetuating regional

instability for profit. Depending on whom you ask, they are national

heroes, fighting for their countries’ cause, or mass murdering gangsters

out to kill and make millions.  In the early 1990s, they appeared in the

Balkans and later in Chechnya and continue to flourish today in, most

prominently, Afghanistan and across Africa -- Somalia, Nigeria, Niger,

Sudan. 

Spanning painting, works on paper, installation, sculpture, performance 

and video, the works in the exhibition attempt to address the global 

implications of contemporary conflict and its evolving impact on the face 

of history. Some artists in the exhibition present us with ominous 

characters extracted from recent times while others invent imaginary 

warlords or portray the havoc wrecked.