Summer Apprenticeship Program 2007: Victim

Creating memorials can be powerful exercise in recalling a tragedy, informing others, and allowing us the peace of mourning, hopefully leading to acceptance. With this in mind, fourteen apprentice artists engaged in an exercise designed to relate and examine a singular event in our lives. The culminating project is a multi-sensory space memorializing the individual events.

Of the two definitions of “victim,” I cited for this project, the first is more obvious
and universally used. The second definition is more subtle and identifies the types of victimization that are often overlooked and less severe. We used the second as the starting point for the Apprentice project. The goal was to examine personal stories of victimization, decide who or what is the victim and pay homage to that person or creature by creating a memorial space and commemorative objects. The wall surfaces are covered with personal images that are created based on the story told and each participant will create their own piece of wall art to be painted directly on the walls. The basis for the images was an introduction to my personal style (photos of people/things repeated and combined in radial, symmetrical patterns). The overall look is similar to wallpaper.

Once the apprentices selected the victim(s) of their story they created soft sculpture figures of the victim(s) which are now displayed on hooks located in the center of their wall images. A recording was made of each apprentice reading their stories. The audio is projected in the memorial space inviting the viewer to further examine each individual’s personal experience in an interactive environment.

View the catalogue here.