The first three words in the title alone of the Metro Article was inspiration enough for my illustration. “Eyes wide shut” was definitely a strong common concept throughout this article and made me think about the extent of things happening in Afghanistan that the SAS, the NZDF and the New Zealand government are turning a blind eye to. Eyes wide shut is a clever play on words with the common phrase ‘eyes wide open’ making you wonder about things that are clearly visible, things that are happening right in front of us but, because of whatever reasons are being shut out to the public eye. In my illustration i have an image of two symmetrical women that have been blindfolded. This represents a number of things, one being the the truth being covered up to New Zealand public. From the experiences of some of the soldiers in this article there has been a lot of illegal discipline and punishment on innocent people that has not been publicly known to New Zealanders. Having read these few experiences alone has allowed me to have a small peek “under the blindfold” but i can say that having the blindfold fully off is a different story. The blindfolded women are also a representation of the victims being suppressed and being forced to cover their eyes to the injustice that is happening to them. With those that live in Afghanistan, especially the children, we see that they have a blindfold over their eyes since birth, not knowing or seeing anything other than war- they have been kept from experiencing and seeing what a normal life without war is like. And the last representation of the blindfolded women is in reference to the SAS, NZDF and the New Zealand government. In the law, we see the famous depiction of justice with the lady justice statue. We all know that lady justice is blindfolded where her blindfold represents “objectivity, in that justice is or should be meted out objectively, without fear or favour, regardless of money, wealth, fame, power, or identity; blind justice and impartiality” (2016, May 30). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice). In this case we see that lady justice is being blinded to the truth of what is happening in Afghanistan. It does raise questions as to if the government is aware of the situation and is purposely doing nothing to raise awareness and at least try to find a solution. I inverted the images of the women in photoshop and gave them no colour to erase the idea of this woman being a particular culture or nationality. By doing so, it also means that not only Afghani people are concerned in this matter, but all races should be as well.
I placed eyes of a woman staring out, on top of the blindfolded women. This represents that although there are more people blinded to the truth, there are still those few that aren’t and that are looking out and waiting for something to be done to correct these wrongs.
Although it maybe gruesome, I used the colour red for the watercolour effect over the women to make it look like spilt blood. The reality made known through this article is that innocent people, some as old as 70 and some as young as 6, are being hurt and killed. The colour red also symbolises blood. Blood represents life, whether it be the continuation of it of the end of it. You would think innocent blood being spilt would be more than enough to get the government to act, but we see that the ‘blindfold’ is still in place.
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