Artist Sebastian Errazuriz came across a saddening and revealing stat: in 2009, the number of U.S. soldiers who committed suicide more than doubled the number who died in combat. I had never heard this statistic either, but it is true. Noting the total lack of reporting on this deeply troubling data, Errazuriz spray painted it on the side of his Brooklyn studio, capturing just one part of the insanity of sending people (usually adolescents or very young adults) to kill other people (strangers, "the enemy"). He comments on his motivations and the experience:
The counting of dead soldiers outside my studio was long and surprisingly eerie; it was hard to forget that every brush stroke was a soldier who had died the previous year. A lot of people stopped to read the mural and were immediately impressed by the reality portrayed. Most of them seemed quite shocked and approached me to ask if what I was painting was real. I tried to explain that I simply wished to create a physical image that could capture people's imagination, creating awareness of the current numbers in death, war and the infinite discrepancy between the resources and energies destined to fight and protect soldiers at war versus the energies invested in protecting their mental health and stability. [emphasis added]Via designboom
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