“You’re a technician, you don’t hear the screams.” Chicago artist Jo Aerne took this quote from a Vietnam vet she heard on a radio talk show and had it copied on a stack of black four-by-five-inch stickers in plain white Helvetica lettering. This is just one of about 100 sticker designs she’s been handing out this year; she intends her terse messages to turn up in unexpected places. “You’re going down the street to buy your diet yogurt, and you see this fact,” she says. Like “55,000 died in the Vietnam War–60,000 Vietnam vets have since committed suicide.” Or some of the pithy progressive editorials she authored: “Dependent on oil, dependent on war” or “Rearming the Middle East is the fastest way to pay for the war.”
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Aerne is attuned to the words deployed in the New World Order. One of her stickers reproduces a Pentagon euphemism for the invasion of Panama: “Predawn vertical insertion,” which hardly sounds like diplomatic intercourse between consenting countries.
“Messages” also includes other artworks. In one corner a VCR plays a Fourth of July cable special: the Arts and Entertainment channel’s Desert Storm–the Mini-Series. A La-Z-Boy recliner is stationed in front of the set, along with warm Coke and cheese twists. A camouflage Desert Storm cap (made in Korea) is parked atop the coatrack. And a selection of illustrated Desert Storm bubble-gum cards sits on a side table: “We Aim at High Things” (the 62nd Air Defense Artillery’s motto), “Dropping Behind the Lines,” and “Wearing the Gas Mask.”
Jo Aerne’s “Messages” can be received at Gallery 1616, 1616 N. Damen, through August 30, from 2 to 5 Tuesday through Saturday or by appointment; 486-7942.
