Response to the Gallery Visit

Sejin Kim

Professor. Cacoilo

Activist, Interlop Pranksters

April 17, 2019

Response to the Museum Visit

            At the exhibition there were many projects that caught my attention right away. The first artwork that caught my attention was the “Denim Day”. The artwork depicts a story about a victim who was harassed by 45 year old driving instructor when she was 18 years old. Another memorable exhibit was the exhibit called “What were You Wearing”. This piece displayed the clothes of a victim of sexual assault, specifically what they wore during the sexual assault. There were four different types of clothing in this exhibition a dress, pajamas, a Nike running tank and running shorts, and a T-shirt and jeans. What this exhibit shows is that the clothes victims are wearing during the sexual assault does not have anything to do with the crime, however, people often ask the victim “What were you wearing?” to diminish the credibility of their stories. Thompson also indicated that activism is an attempt to wrestle with the issues that have come up repeatedly in his work.

Denim Day

In 1992 in Italy, an 18 year old girl went out for a driving test with her 45 year old driving instructor. During the lesson, he forced her to pull over to the side of the road and raped her. She reported the assault and he was convicted. A statement from the Court argued that because the victim was wearing very tight jeans, she had to help him remove them, and by removing the jeans it was not rape, but consensual sex. The art work “Denim Day” is trying to give a message to the world that sexual abuse can happen to anybody, and that a victim does not have any reason to be blamed for the sexual violence committed to them. The day after the crime, the women in the Italian Parliament came to work wearing jeans in solidarity with the victim. The Denim Day campaign was created in response to the case and the activism surrounding it. Since then, wearing jeans on Denim Day has become a symbol of protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual harassment, abuse, assault, and rape. “Denim Day” is displaying the extent of how problematic the society that we are living in is. Sexual assault can happen anywhere or anytime to anyone and still it is never the victim's fault, as the artwork depicts.

What were You Wearing

           The second exhibit “What were You Wearing” shows the disgusting side of capitalism and power. The artist of this exhibit shows that victims from sexual harassment were not the one to blame for what happened to them, especially when they often get asked as “what were you wearing?” at the time of their assault. “Capitalism is thus not only out there-in belching factories, in gleaming shopping malls, and in politicians' offices-but also emerges from us and target us”. (Thompson, 3) The society we are living in does not teach the people with power to not harass the weak, they teach the people who do not have power to be careful and often blame the weak. The artist addresses that we are living in a society where a victim can be blamed for the fault of others and often the victims story is pushed to one side, unheard.

4 years old victim

In the exhibit “What were you wearing?”, The different victims stories were told. Of these stories, one was of a girl who was only 4 years old when she was sexually harassed by her own uncle. She told her mother about what happened, however, her mother laughed and said her uncle just loves the victim so much. As we can see in this victim’s story, the mother of the victim ignored and did not take her word seriously because of the relationship between the uncle and the family.

Nike running tank and shorts victim

        Another story was of a victim who was wearing a Nike running tank and running shorts. The victim recounts, “Everyone always told me to be afraid of strangers while I ran…”. According to what this victim said, we can tell that we are living in a society that is full of capitalism and a strong patriarchy. This victim was raped by her sister’s girlfriend. According to how she described the crime, she told her to stop so many times, however, she never stopped. After many years later, she told her sister about what happened to her and her sister began blaming her own sibling for wearing “booty shorts” when she ran, and that she should not have worn that in front of her girlfriend.

My semester project will consist of multiple posters which will aim to evoke a powerful message through simple designs which people will be able to easily become interested and understand what the poster is about. Many of the exhibits that were part of the gallery also had a simple display of the certain problem which easily presented the problems of our society and evoked a powerful meaning. These exhibits were even displayed in a place where people could easily see the artwork. The audience would easily notice the work as they made their way up to the second floor of the gallery since the exhibits were directly in front of the stairs.

Activism is quite similar to the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on an initial condition in which a small change can result in large differences. Thompson indicates "For all of the uneasiness it provokes, the ambiguous gesture is also easier to digest and sell, because it can be attached to almost any ideology particularly the dominant, capitalist one". (51) The challenges and critiques to these kinds of issues in our society are very important because it is not only about reviving the issues. It has the ability to give much inspiration to other people and gives people the opportunity to think about these types of issues, which could lead to a bigger act that could quite possibly change our society.

Work Cited
Thompson, Nato. Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century. Melville House, 2015.