The “Thinking of You” exhibit

Last night, IRWGS hosted a panel for the opening of a new art exhibit titled “The Legacy of Rape.” We sent Avid Art Admirer Sarah Dahl to check it out.

Conceptually, a panel and art exhibit titled “The Legacy of Rape” doesn’t sound heartening. To be sure, last night’s discussion of how to deal with the effects of sexual violence was heavy, yet it offered a tone of hope, showcasing the creative ways in which today’s artists and academics are addressing rape.

Marianne Hirsch, a professor in Columbia’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, introduced and moderated the program; and Columbia Law professor Katherine Franke also spoke. The other panelists were Leora Kahn, the founder and Executive Director of PROOF, the organization behind the Legacy of Rape photo exhibit; artist Patricia Cronin; and sociologist, policy analyst, and New School professor Anna Di Lellio.

Kahn conjured up the image of a Colombian rape survivor she spoke to. who bravely asked “why should I give you my story?” This question set off a chain of thoughts in Kahn’s head. Why, after all, should rape survivors share their stories? The Colombian woman answered her own question: “We want our brothers, sons, politicians to see this, so we can be heard, so this doesn’t have to happen again.”

Rape is often an effect of war and conflict, Kahn noted. She traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bosnia, Nepal, and Colombia to gather stories and photograph rape survivors. In many of these places, the women must live near their rapists, making sharing experiences difficult. Kahn said she and her partners worked with women to give them courage to open up, and hope that things might change. Two years after the project began, she said, many of the women have openly come out with their stories, and are no longer hiding.

Cronin, an artist, was selected to show work in the 56th International Art Exhibition Biennale di Venizia, an incredibly prestigious exhibition Cronin called “the Olympics of Contemporary Art.”

In the smallest church in Venice–a petitely beautiful, deconsecrated space with three altars–Cronin created a piece that paid tribute to rape victims in three different countries. Her “Shrine to Girls” consisted of piles of saris, to symbolize two cousins gang-raped in India last year; hijabs, for the victims of Boko Haram’s abduction and forced marriages of girls in Nigeria; and aprons, representing women who were forced to work in Magdalene laundries by the Catholic Church in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The larger theme of this year’s Biennale, “All The World’s Futures,” addressed what Cronin called “the disquiet of our times, [and raised the question of how to] deliver really strong content in a way that might un-numb viewers.” Many of the other pieces addressed forms of violence in forceful ways. Cronin’s work had a lighter, though still powerful, touch.

Di Lellio also spoke about an art installation that used clothes to commemorate sexual violence survivors, in this case of the 1998-1999 Kosovo war. She helped implement Alketa Xhafa-Mripa installation, called “Thinking of You,” this summer. It consisted of 5,000 dresses gathered from people across the world, and hung across Kosovo’s soccer stadium. That location was chosen, Di Lellio said, because it represents the man’s world, and because it is both public and confined–much like the act of rape.

Gathering the clothes and constructing the exhibit was a communal effort of men and women, survivors and non-survivors alike.

Franke pulled sexual violence into an academic lense, within the frame of law. “Rape accomplishes an unspeakability, an undoing, an unmaking of the subject, that resists being put into words,” Franke noted. “How can we give voice to something beyond language?”

This is indeed a difficult question, and one all of the artists had grappled with. Franke noted that even within art, remains the question of whether these testaments of rape can belong to/be understood by anyone, or only the survivor.

Franke related this idea to the process of a sexual violence trial. Accurate testimony from victims is required to hold perpetrators accountable. Though in the name of justice, Franke wondered whether this truly helps in the healing process. “Human suffering is instrumentalized,” Franke said. “Trial demands the witness reassemble themself, if only long enough to testify.”

The Legacy of Rape exhibit, on Schermerhorn Ext. 7

She then spoke of today’s affirmative consent laws, mandated in New York and California and on some college campuses (including this one), which require verbal acknowledgment at every step of the act. Whether or not that is feasible, Franke noted that these laws turn sex, and rape, into transactions lacking emotions. Rape is defined as a failed negotiation or lack thereof, sex is a successful contract. Words, not actions, distinguish the two, which means the agents involved must be liberal, verbal, and self-interested.

The panel ended with a Q and A moderated by Hirsch. The evening was also preceded by a wine and cheese opening of the photo exhibit, at 754 Schermerhorn Extension.

“Thinking of You” via Getty Images