Artistic interventions: Gender and nation in contemporary war art

This chapter explores state-commissioned war art as a particular means for reproducing nationalism and suggests that an in-depth study of this type of war art broadens critical reflection on contemporary war narratives and military deaths. The primary focus of the chapter is on the artworks of the Estonian artist Maarit Murka who was embedded with the Estonian troops in Afghanistan on the commission of the Estonian Military Museum. The analysis speaks to the tension between art, war, commemoration, and national belonging as well as to the changing gender relations in the Estonian context. Comparing Murka’s artworks with Danish examples of state-commissioned art, the chapter argues that the way in which these artworks address the gendered myth of protection and the relationship between the home front and the war front both reproduces and destabilizes gendered and nationalist discourses of militarization and justifications for war.