i solemnly swear by Paul Pearce

: “i solemnly swear” is an exhibition about the consequences of conscription and deployment into combat. Syracuse artist Paul Pearce was drafted into the US Army in 1967 and deployed to Vietnam in 1968. “I should never have been a soldier, and yet I was a good soldier,” Pearce says. “For this reason, I am haunted by what I did and what I witnessed. When people say, ‘Thank you for your service,’ my reply is, ‘Don’t thank me for my service, you don’t know what I did. My country made me do it and I was just a kid.’”