Camouflage aesthetics: militarisation, craftivism, and the in/ visibility of resistance at scale

Abstract

This intervention offers an aesthetic contribution to the studies of camouflage cultures by situating them in contemporary Ukraine. Using collaging as an analytic technique, I present three ontological cuts that demonstrate how scraps of camouflage remediate the spaces in which war is produced, contemplated and fought. Interrogating the relationship between visibility and survival on a macroscopic scale, I ask: how can camouflage scraps – textiles whose primary function is to conceal – work to reclaim the agency of those who craft them? I draw on the Ukrainian context to argue that not all militarisations are equal - cutting and layering the scraps of the Soviet/imperial military-industrial complex onto a new plane of representation, Ukrainian craftivists make a decolonial cut from Ukraine’s Soviet past, reconstituting the social fabric torn in three centuries of wars and occupation. As hegemonic imperialist discourses continue to erase lived experiences of military violence, camouflage aesthetic may also become a symbol of collective resistance.