One of the more depressing works of art ever made, Enduring Afghanistan logs all of the casualties of the War in Afghanistan.

Bart records the deaths in not just one, but two ways. First she hangs one dog-tag per death on a chain-link fence in the shape of Afghanistan. The dog-tags are strangely not embossed, even though that is the singular purpose of a dog-tag. The ones in this piece are just blank little pieces of metal to signify only that a death has occurred not who it was or where they were from. The dog-tags are hung according to where the most deaths have occurred creating a topographical map of death, which is highly upsetting and highly brilliant. The fence is a hard-hitting part of the work too, as it “has a built in symbolism and meaning to it, whether is it keeping us in or keeping us out or referencing other street-side memorials that seem to spring up.” Bart’s art will simultaneously teach you about the War in Afghanistan and depress the living daylights out of you.

And to complement the first part of the piece, the second death record is a leger, which has written out in beautiful cursive the full names of all 2,386 men and women who have died serving in the war. The use of books is a major part of Bart’s work. She has always been fascinated by memory and chronicling events in history, which she attributes to her Jewish heritage. Books are, as Bart puts it, “a place of recording and remembering” and remembering tragedy is a big part of Jewish traditions. True to form, Bart really leaves no tear unjerked with this one.