Victims make major fashion statement
By Erica Diem
May 4, 2005 9:00 p.m.
The statistics are accessible to anyone these days.
Numerous female college students will be victims of completed or
attempted rape during the academic year. Up to nine out of 10
offenders will be known to the victims, usually boyfriends,
ex-boyfriends, classmates, friends, acquaintances or co-workers.
Ninety percent of these assaults will never be reported to law
officials. Domestic violence accounts for as much as 40 percent of
all LAPD calls. The numbers go on extensively.
On May 10, UCLA will begin displaying its annual Clothesline
Project, designed to educate the UCLA community about just how
prevalent sexual and domestic assault remains today. Every year
during spring quarter, students and faculty can see the display of
multicolored T-shirts adorning Schoenberg Quad, some with hopeful
messages of restored existence, others with condemnations of their
former attackers. Yet they have all been created as an artistic
rendering of an ever-present social concern.
“The Project began in Massachusetts, where there was a
great reaction and influence from the AIDS Quilt,” said Lisa
White, one of this year’s co-chairs of the Clothesline
Project. “The quilt had such an impact on AIDS awareness by
giving survivors an outlet through art that would at the same time
increase surrounding awareness about the issue.”
The project began in 1990 as a supplement to the already popular
Take Back the Night March and Rally, and was actually a result of
statistics from the Men’s Rape Prevention Project in
Washington, D.C., which showed that while 58,000 soldiers died in
the Vietnam War, 51,000 women were killed by men in their lives
during the same period of time. A small group of women reacted by
creating a program that would allow victims to bear witness to
their pain, and to establish a voice for the multiple voices that
remain unheard each year.
The project, with its strong social message and implications, is
composed entirely of artistic creations of many people’s most
private inner thoughts and emotions. While the line of T-shirts may
appear to be solely promoting a public message, it is through the
aesthetic of art that the message is broadcast visually. In this
way, artistry appears to be taking yet another foothold in the
realm of social commentary.
“I don’t think there is a great division here
between “˜political statement’ and
“˜art,'” White said. “Art is a very social
thing, and this project was the brainchild of an idea to see how
influential art can be in increasing social awareness. Being aware
of the harsh realities of our society and what many people go
through is a very beneficial thing.”
White is not alone in her opinions on the unity of societal
statement and art; there are 500 Clothesline Projects known to take
place every year, dispersed among 41 states and five countries. The
project has been a great social success, and has aided multiple
communities in expanding awareness about sexual and domestic
violence.
However, the Clothesline Project is also an art display, and is
subject to expectations of aesthetics as well as intellectual
stimulation.
“There are really two types of art: the kind that you see
in galleries, and the kind that is socially aware and out there
with a message to convey,” said third-year art student Justin
Greving. “Often the social art is looked down on in the art
community, but I think the project is a great example of people
utilizing artistic expression to get out an idea. It would be
interesting to see it in gallery space.”
Whether or not the UCLA art community finds the Clothesline
Project to be gallery material, the display offers hundreds of
victims each year a method of venting their often-repressed
emotional turmoil. When those splashes of color are seen in
Schoenberg Quad, art and commentary become united under the common
purpose of breaking the thick silence that often surrounds the
reality of sexual assault.
“Even though the Project uses a passive way of engaging
the viewer, it is effective in bringing the message to you,”
Greving said. “We don’t have to go looking for it when
the project is up. It is settled right in the middle of our
environment.”
