Martha Rosler. House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (ca 1967–1972 i 2004, 2008)

Martha Rosler has frequently addressed war and the national security climate, connecting daily life at home with the conduct of violence abroad. The photomontages in her series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, made from approximately 1967 to 1972 in response to the war in Vietnam, drew simultaneously on the photojournalism and the advertisements in mass-circulation magazines. These works present the geopolitics of war and dispossession, showing how we divide the world into those who are entitled to a safe and comfortable life and those who are entitled only to lie dead outside the window. The images were originally distributed as flyers at anti-war demonstrations, and some also appeared in the underground press. In 2004 and 2008, in opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rosler decided to reinstitute the series. Using the same methods toward the same ends, these interventions can be seen to underline the painful repetition of unjustifiable and unwinnable military adventures.

Martha Rosler is an artist who has long focused on matters of the public sphere and landscapes of everyday life, especially as they affect women. She has frequently addressed war and the national security climate, connecting daily life at home with the conduct of war abroad. Some of her best-known works deal with documentary and representation, including the photographic work The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (1974–1975). Rosler lives and works in Brooklyn.