Photo By Maj. Courtney Slater | A mural painted by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Kaitlyn Barone, Intelligence Analyst...... read more read more
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Imagine our lives today, as we sit reading this story, helping our daughters with their homework, kids playing in the yard, while parents are preparing dinner. A week goes by, and now you are running, unsure if you will make it to the airport. Your world is flipped upside down and you have hours, not weeks, to determine what you will fit into a single suitcase when you flee the only home you know. No returning to collect family heirlooms passed down for generations, no returning to collect personal items. The life you built is left behind. Your life and the lives of your family and is now depends on if you can get your hands on a one way ticket to an unknown location, where the language and culture is foreign. Imagine being so desperate to save your family, you hand your baby to a stranger over a fence in hopes they make it. Because to not try, would result in death. So many people this last year lived the horrors we can only imagine. To lose these stories would be a disservice to their legacies and the front row seats they sat in as the world forever changed.
To tell a story, someone else’s story, comes with great responsibility. This is the task TSgt Barone took on as her personal mission.
Barone, an intelligence analyst with the 126th Intelligence Squadron, volunteered her services to support refugees from Afghanistan for Operation Allies Welcome, at Joint Base McGuire Ft. Dix in New Jersey. While there, Task Force Commander Col. Rahel, an Afghani immigrant himself, wanted to give a voice to the refugees as well as the Airmen who worked on the mission. He wanted their story preserved for future generations.
“There was talk about our task force commander wanting to have this done as a way to capture the story of these people. I have experience painting wall murals so I volunteered,” explained Barone, who went on to be the team lead in the project. “…this was going to give me an opportunity to talk to people and really hear their stories.”
Rahel and Barone understood the importance of not just speaking for the Afghani evacuees, but allowing them to tell their own stories. And so began a partnership. Barone led a team of eighteen individuals, roughly eight service member and ten refugees to create the masterpiece that followed.
“We actually asked the Afghan refugees to help with the painting. So we got to talk to some of them, got their stories and really designed the mural to encompass their journey from Afghanistan, to the villages and then out in to America.”
Within the team of artists designing the mural was an Afghani village elder who’s profession in Afghanistan was a mosaic artist. His contribution to the mural was the large arch, representing the architecture in Afghanistan. Another evacuee and mural contributor, a thirteen year old girl, shared her story with Barone of a quick escape carrying nothing but a backpack which held her last physical connection of life before evacuation of Afghanistan to the United States.
Barone recalls the emotional moments listening to the evacuees detail their journeys and she knew this mural would be designed to reflect just that.
“Their stories are very sad,” Barone said. “But you get to see how that sadness and fear turn into a beautiful thing now that they are safe.”
After multiple days of planning, sketching with pencils and crayons, the team began the seventeen day process to turn three blank canvases into a twelve foot wide and six foot tall visual of the historic journey.
“We wanted it to be transportable,” recalled Barone. “So we said let’s do it on canvases. And then we sketched it in there and we changed and added things as time went on. Some days it was twelve hours, some days it was eight hours.”
Barone’s ability to tell this story through art didn’t come without challenges. It wasn’t enough to just have figures on the canvas. The stories needed to be told and therefore the small details that bring a silhouette to life by the curvatures in their profiles, the weight of their bags on their backs; all had to be meticulously illustrated. To do so, planning was crucial to ensure time for the paint to dry between layers was sufficient. Paint bled and blended into areas that required continuous touch ups in order to move onto the next phase. Barone smiled while recalling the final four days of the project, reviewing the final product and continuing to make touch ups, fixing and enhancing aspects of the design.
“We wanted to make sure it was perfect.”
People can take the Afghan journey so many others experienced while visiting the mural which is currently hanging in the Air Force Expeditionary Center at McGuire Air Force Base. The journey depicts the start of their journey in Afghanistan, carrying their whole lives on their backs as they begin their journeys to America. Three tents represent the villages erected at McGuire AFB, where refugees stayed while their visas were processing. From the villages the refugees move out into the United States to begin their new lives.
Barone herself did not deploy to Afghanistan during the twenty year conflict. The conflict has shaped many of our lives, both for those who were directly involved in the operations, and civilians who had no direct engagement. This mural is projected to be displayed in the future at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.
A story such as the heroic journey of evacuating one’s homeland, is a story worth telling, and worth sharing for generations to come. Barone’s mural honors the sacrifice of the evacuees as well as the contributions of the service men and women who played a life changing role in the lives of the Afghanistan people.
| Date Taken: | 04.08.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 07.14.2022 12:30 |
| Story ID: | 424975 |
| Location: | SPRINGFIELD-BECKLEY AIR GUARD STATION, OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 103 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Airman builds cross-cultural bridges with mural, by Maj. Courtney Slater, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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