The Art of Healing

  Photos by ANGIE LEVINE First-year social welfare graduate
student Jennifer Chen Speckman looks at shirts
decorated by victims of sexual violence. The Clothesline Project is
on display in Perloff and Schoenberg Quads this week.

By Dharshani Dharmawardena
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The multi-colored shirts hung across Perloff and Schoenberg
Quads like wavering wraiths of the past, but their presence offered
support and comfort for survivors of gender/sex-based violence.

With shirts exhibiting words of encouragement, like “Si te
quieres a ti mismo puedes salir a delante en tu vida””“
“˜If you love yourself, you will succeed in life’
““ The Clothesline Project gives survivors a venue to relay
their experience with sexual/gender violence through visual
art.

This year’s event, which took place May 15-17, attracted
hundreds of visitors, according to second-year undeclared student
Morgan Joeck, executive co-chair of the project.

Many of the visitors walked through the exhibit because people
close to them had experienced sexual/gender abuse.

The waving shirts ““ with messages ranging from inspiring
words of survival to exclamations of long-contained anger ““
stood as a powerful presence for those walking through.

“The ones that are the most heart-breaking are the ones
that say “˜Fuck you,'” said Kerry Stiles, a
fourth-year history student. “Really the victims just seem so
destroyed ““ there seems to be so much anger there.”

  Shirts on display are color coded according to type of
assault. Survivors communicate their experiences with sexual
violence through visual art. Though people who have not experienced
sexual violence could offer their support through donations,
signing a reflection sheet or dedicating small paper shirts, only
the survivors themselves could make the actual shirts.

But family and friends of victims killed because of violence
could make a special white shirt remembering the lives of the
deceased. Each shirt color represents a specific type of violence
committed against a victim.

By Thursday afternoon, nearly 45 shirts had been made, according
to Joeck. The other shirts on display came from those made by UCLA
students and staff in recent years and from the National
Clothesline Project.

First-year undeclared student Laura Segnit stopped by the event
because one of her friends was involved with the project. Yet, the
display of emotion from the shirts left its mark.

“It’s very powerful ““ just the sheer number of
shirts out here, and each one of them is a different story,”
Segnit said.

“I seemed to see a lot of violence from relatives ““
that really surprised me.”

According to Joeck, the most common victims of sexual/gender
abuse are children, and many of these and other assaults go
unreported.

But the violence does not affect only the victims, and most
people know someone who has been abused sexually, he added.

“We’ve reached out to so many people, looking at the
reflections of that people have written and the people who’ve
come by and told us how much it meant to them,” Joeck
said.

The Clothesline Project is on display Friday from 10 a.m. to 2
p.m in Perloff and Schoenberg Quads.