There is something powerful about the energy, focus, and technique of silk-screening. When you get a momentum going with printing, it’s like you start to feel part of something bigger. It’s like building a movement.
A way of looking at building a movement is how we come to find ourselves reconnecting to self, finding a sense of community, and coming to a different meaning or perspective of our own experience. Feeling a need to take action. To inspire other people with hope for the violence to stop and to know they are not alone.
‘There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.’ – Audre Lorde.
As each person’s voice creates space for each others’, a narrative takes shape, a chorus grows louder. The resilience and story of the women and who they are despite their experience of sexual violence will take up more space in public consciousness.
In this particular time — as many people seek and grasp for answers, a sense of resolve, healing, and to grieve the lives lost an
d affected by violence, finding language to talk about experiences of sexual violence is still hard. Finding hope, solidarity, and a shared humanity is urgently happening. It takes a community and for all to come together to actively denounce racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, Islamaphobia, ableism, and all forms of oppression and discrimination. Finding the ways to connect and unite with each other across differences, power and sense of safety is a step towards addressing the pervasiveness of sexual violence in our community.
In a previous workshop, artist Betty Carpick helped to capture some of the key messages emerging that women participants of Honouring Our Stories want to share.
These messages took on a new life as they became the screens we worked with in the following workshop that artist Elizabeth Buset facilitated on January 22nd, at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.
Speaking to the influence of political art, Liz Buset talked about how silkscreening of posters have been used to deliver messages as a medium capturing the attention of the masses. This method of printing is efficient for making large quantities of posters. There is a unique sense of personal satisfaction in the production and distribution of the printed matter.
Liz Buset giving a demo on silkscreening and sharing about her current exhibition of work: SWINE at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.
Here are a few photos of the silkscreening process:
The tools: Ink, stapler, squeegee, tape, spoon, registration area on a clean and flat table.
Working together to prepare the screen by taping.
To those of you reading who have experienced sexual violence, remember:
A person who came to make a sign in support of survivors and for Take Back The Night.
Take Back the Night sign-making drop-in session in November, 2016 at Northwestern Ontario Women’s Centre.
Will you make space and listen?
Will you join the movement?
Until next time. In solidarity, – j.chung
Check out previous blog posts > Honouring Our Stories: Bringing together two worlds. >Healing is non-linear.
#HonouringOurStories #WeBelieveSurvivors
Funding for this work was provided by It’s Never Okay: Ontario’s Action Plan to Stop Sexual Violence and Harassment
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