During the first Gulf War, I sat at my loom weaving a series of tapestries honouring the souls of the birds that my cat had killed and listening to news of the war on the radio (the Broken Promises series). People were looking through bombsights of their airplanes and killing other people, innocent and not so innocent, far below them. Looking through the lens of my camera I could cope with the reality of the bloody feathers of the dead creatures I found in our house. One step removed makes murder easier to view.

Over time, my purpose in weaving these requiems grew to encompass my response to the ritual killing of wars, whether covert or overt. Terrorist actions, aerial bombing, body counts, dead civilians, dead birds — what is our personal relationship to these forms of murder? These dead birds became symbols, for me, of the soul damaged by all the senseless killing that takes place in the world.