“Experiencing the War in Iraq,” a new exhibit at two venues: the Pawtucket Armory/Arts Exchange and Machines with Magnets. At the Armory is a work by Lauri Richardson which is a display of American flags, with a flag for each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

Francesco Levato is executive director of the Poetry Center of Chicago. Wafaa Bilal is an Iraq-born performance artist now living in the United States. John Paul Hornbeck is a U.S. Army veteran who runs a veterans’ counseling program in Iowa City, Iowa. Rebecca Heyl is a Boston artist and writer who has worked for the Israeli peace movement. Robert Walters is part of a U.S. Navy squadron currently stationed in Iraq.

If you were expecting “Experiencing the War in Iraq,” a month-long series of Iraq-themed talks, performances and exhibits organized by a group of local artist-activists, to feature a predictable chorus of antiwar voices, think again. As the names on the above list suggest, “Experiencing the War in Iraq” is far too diverse — and for that reason, much too important — to dismiss as just another chance to vent about the war in Iraq.

To take just one example: At Machines with Magnets, a new multi-use arts space in Pawtucket, Wakefield artist Russ Smith has recreated the harrowing Fallujah Blues installation he first exhibited two years ago at AS220. Inspired by the 2003 attack on four employees of the American military contractor Blackwater USA, the installation uses bits of charred cloth and rope to represent the men’s burned and mutilated bodies.

It’s a tough, in-your-face work — made even more so by Smith’s decision to include a series of grisly photographs taken shortly after the killings (and widely reproduced at the time by both foreign and American news organizations). Though visitors are free to ignore the photographs — all are partially covered by pieces of white cloth — their presence here is a stark reminder of the violence unleashed by the American invasion.

Yet just a few steps away from Fallujah Blues is its visual and emotional opposite.

Thinking of You, a work by Oregon artist Ashley Neese, urges viewers to write letters to American troops stationed in Iraq. In a statement, Neese explains how she began writing such letters as a fourth-grader during the first Gulf War. Now grown up and with a brother serving in Iraq, Neese continues the tradition and urges others to do likewise in “a nonpartisan spirit.” She even provides a stack of self-addressed envelopes.

That these two works — one shockingly graphic, the other sweetly hopeful — can peaceably coexist in the same exhibit says a lot about the open-minded spirit at the heart of “Experiencing the War in Iraq.” It’s also a testament to the project’s artist-organizers, who insisted that the art and performance venues be open to a wide range of people, including Iraqi refugees and Iraq War veterans. (For the record, the organizers are Fall River painter Jeff Carpenter and Providence artist-musicians Erin Rosenthal, Leif Goldberg and Raphael Lyon.)

That said, the art side of “Experiencing the War in Iraq” suffers from some of the same problems that afflict many large group exhibitions. They include uneven quality, overcrowding (mainly at Machines with Magnets) and a lack of background information about many of the artists and the artworks.

Still, these are minor complaints, especially given the range of viewpoints on display at the project’s two Pawtucket-based exhibit venues: Machines with Magnets and the Pawtucket Armory/Arts Exchange. Granted, most of the 70-plus artworks and installations fall somewhere along the antiwar spectrum. But as one of the participants in a recent panel discussion at AS220 noted, how many people are actually pro-war? (For a complete listing of events, visit www.reconnectus.org.)

Though both sites are worth a visit, I’d recommend starting at the armory.

Not only is it a dramatic and, given the context, richly symbolic space, but it contains one of the shows’ signature artworks: Lauri Richardson’s Iraq War Memorial: Flags of Freedom, Cost of War. Filling most of the armory’s 11,000-square-foot drill hall, Iraq War Memorial consists of hundreds of hand-painted, postcard-size American flags — each one commemorating an American service man or woman killed in Iraq.

In an ironic twist, the flags — there were 3,980 as of last Friday — are installed so that they hang in long, looping arcs across the middle of the drill hall. If you didn’t know any better, you might think they were the remains of some long-ago Fourth of July celebration.

The armory is also the main multimedia venue for “Experiencing the War in Iraq.” A selection of short film and video pieces, for example, plays on a large monitor installed at the back of the drill hall. Watching the entire loop takes about 20 minutes, with Francesco Levato’s poetic musings on the nature of torture and Krista Caballero’s mash-up of Iraq-related YouTube videos making the strongest impression.

Other highlights include One Chair, a take-off on the Last Supper by Wafaa Bilal and Shawn Lawson, Crossing the Line, a kind of interactive combat manual by digital artist Sean Hovendick.

The remainder of the artworks are installed at Machines with Magnets, where they occupy a pair of first-floor galleries. Like Richardson’s Iraq War Memorial, several pieces call attention to Iraq’s ever-rising death tolls. Among them: Dennis Delgado’s Contact Sheet, which features soldiers’ portraits downloaded from the Web and printed on acetate, and Rebecca Heyl’s Collateral Damage installation, which strikingly compares the number of American and Iraqi fatalities. Both are public artworks that began as personal acts of conscience.

There are references to now-infamous events, including the 2003 massacre of four American military contractors (Smith’s Fallujah Blues) and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib (Biagio Azzarelli’s sculpture of a kneeling prisoner clasped by a skeletal hand).

Other works take ironic aim at American gun-lust (Dylan McManus’ bullet-filled candy box) and wartime euphemisms such as “extraordinary rendition” and “preemptive war” (Dan Wood’s New Newspeak Dictionary).

Yet some of the best works are also among the show’s quietest. I’m thinking here of photographs such as Morning Walk and Squatter Camps Around Baghdad, both of which depict scenes you probably won’t see on the nightly news. In the first, taken by an anonymous photographer, an Iraqi woman walks down a rubble-strewn street. In the second, taken by Iraq-based photojournalist Andrew Stern, a makeshift hut stands in the middle of a vast sea of garbage.

In their own quiet way, these pictures bring home the human cost of the war — and the continuing post-Surge challenges for both Americans and Iraqis — more effectively than some of the show’s more strident entries.

“Experiencing the War in Iraq” continues through March 30 at Machines with Magnets, 700 Main St., and the Pawtucket Armory/Arts Exchange, 176 Exchange St., in Pawtucket. Exhibit hours: Thurs.-Sun. noon-6 at Machines with Magnets and Thurs.-Sun. 5-8 p.m. at the armory. On March 19, a candlelight procession and performances at the Blackstone Valley Visitors Center will mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. For more information, visit www.reconnectus.org. (Note: After its run in Pawtucket, “Experiencing the War in Iraq” will travel to the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River from April 5 to May 3.)

bvansicl@projo.com