THE BODY AND BLOOD
Informed by "Ruined", a Pulitzer Prize winning play by Lynn Nottage, which addresses atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Violence against women is a global issue; ubiquitous and without boundaries. According to Amnesty International one out of every three women worldwide will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime, with the rates reaching 70 percent in some countries. Most rapes go unreported - only 16% are ever reported to the police. In the United States a reported attack happens every two minutes, 720 times a day.
This installation presented an image of those numbers. Each day, for 34 days, 720 dried rose petals were added to a honeysuckle basket in the center of the gallery. The basket maker is Luzene Sequoyah Hill, my grandmother, who survived being sent to Carlisle Indian School. Native American women are almost three times more likely to be sexually assaulted than non-Native women in the U.S, and 90 per cent of the assaults are by non-Native men. This is an anomaly within ethnic/racial interactions. 500 years of colonial patriarchy continues.
Between October 12 and November 14, 2009, a total of 24,480 petals spilled over that basket, as sanctus bells rang every two minutes.
. . . the body and blood, installation, 2009, University of North Carolina - Asheville