Title: “A Daughter Returns: Fading Cinnabar”

Artist: Scottie Kersta-Wilson

Medium: Giclee photomontage

Artist Statement: “When my husband and I toured Vietnam and the site of my father’s helicopter crash (KIA 1967), we found war memorials everywhere, as you might expect – after all, they won the war. One of the most moving monuments was the one I call Fading Cinnabar. It is an enormous block of red covered with carvings of the exploits of the North Vietnamese military – of particular interest is the soldier holding his two young children – the kids could be me and my siblings. Everyone lost in this war, but mainly the children.”

Bio: Scottie Kersta-Wilson, a Chicago-based artist, is a visual storyteller using a combination of words and images to share her experience as a war orphan. Her father was KIA in Vietnam in 1967 and she examines war’s destruction, beauty, unintended consequences, and seeming inevitability.