Francesco Simeti has exploited wallpaper as the medium for explicit political commentary and protest. He has designed patterns with motifs such as military helicopters, parachutes and exploding bombs, but using digital media and photomontage techniques he has also modified several historic wallpaper patterns, subverting decorative designs by inserting images culled from newspapers showing scenes of combat, conflict, and their consequences. In Arabian Nights (2003) , a pattern by J.B. Reveillon from 1789 showing a manicured park landscape with lakes, decorative bridges and pergolas, is peopled with Afghani refugees following the US military intervention in the country - we see refugees toting their belongings on donkeys, balloon sellers on bicycles, women doing their laundry in the waters of the lakes and streams. By these means Simeti brings warfare (specifically wars in which the US and Western military forces are engaged) into the domestic arena, blending his imagery seamlessly into wallpaper patterns in an explicit demonstration of how we have become inured to such scenes on our TV screens, and allow them to fade - literally - into the background. There is also the suggestion here that these 'colonial' wars being fought in the Middle East and Afghanistan (for control of commodities such as oil) underpin the economies - and thus the lifestyles - in the West. There is also implicit here a comment on domestic comforts in the West, from which we watch these conflicts on out TV screens, in contrast to the homelessness and exile endured by refugees.

This paper was originally devised for a site-specific installation at the Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design which holds historic wallpapers and textiles.