Issue 2.2 | Winter 20004 — Reverberations: On Violence

On Violence: An Online Gallery

Featuring work by: Ida Applebroog, Gaye Chan, Sue Coe, Lisa Kahane, Suzanne Lacy, Dread Scott, and Emna Zghal

From the global threat of the “war against terrorism” to the most intimate forms of domestic assault, every form of violence is inherently destructive. It stands to reason, then, that opposition to violence and feminist alternatives to it must rely on constructive forces, the urge to collaborate, connect, create. S&F Online asked seven visual artists committed to channeling their creative talents into projects that enrich public dialogue about violence to contribute to Reverberations. The result is an interactive gallery “On Violence” that includes websites, slideshows, and animated images based on over 115 original paintings drawings, prints, photographs and installation projects.

Ida Applebroog and Sue Coe challenge us to recognize women’s bodies as a site of violence. In her painting, “Modern Olympia (After Versace)”, Applebroog depicts a woman’s figure as a battlefield stripped by fashion, ideals of beauty, and sexism, while Sue Coe depicts the brutality of rape and war in her provocative drawings “Bedford Rape” and “Bomb Shelter.” In “A Dot and a Line,” Gaye Chan merges photography and cartography to move the discussion from the individual body to the consequences of colonialism on an entire people and their land. Dread Scott meditates on the legacy of violence perpetrated by the U.S. at home and abroad in the animated image “Beloved Guardian.” He then demonstrates the power of art as a tool for protest with his series of screen prints, created with Marc Lepson in 2002, to rally against the incumbent war on Iraq. Emna Zghal contemplates the artist as a force of resistance in “The Prophet of Black Folk,” a series of twelve prints based on a poet who leads a slave revolt in Ninth Century Iraq. Lisa Kahane and Suzanne Lacy continue the work of artists as activists in their respective projects: Kahane documents feminists organizing against violence in her photographs of Women in Black, an international peace network, while Suzanne Lacy coordinates large-scale public art performances that allow participants to address such issues as police brutality, teenage motherhood, and everyday urban conflict in “The Oakland Projects.”

Biographical information about each artist is available in the gallery. For a more extensive look at the artists’ work, please visit the Reverberations “Online Resources” page, linked below.

Hope Dector, Curator & Web Designer