An inquiry on the Blackwood's website asks: “How and where does violence hide?,” further probing: “how does violence linger and accumulate across generations? How does it persist in different forms?” On National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, we revisit the works of artists and writers Christina Sharpe, Jessica Lynn Whitbred, Tonatiuh López, Michelle Murphy, Emily Johnson, Mourning School, and Clara Lynas in the Blackwood’s archives, as they strategically try to identify where violence hides, and how we may lean into our collective strength to resist, empower, and heal.

“The goal is to eliminate structures that cause and perpetuate harm; not to make ourselves rebound from continuing harm,” notes Christina Sharpe in Against Renewal, published in SDUK13: WADING.  Sharpe discusses the violences of the ill world, noting the ways in which bodies are controlled, listing the instances such as “the banning of Plan B, the overturning of Roe v Wade, the rush by many states in the U[nited] S[tates] to make abortion illegal, [and] the criminalization of miscarriages.” These examples, alongside the curbing of critical conversations across institutions are named especially as Sharpe critiques the institutional response of "renewal," repackaged as congratulatory narratives of resilience. Sharpe warns of the label “resilience,” in that it is a label to sit in individualized narratives, rather than to shift to collectively address the sources of violence systemically.

These examples, alongside the curbing of critical conversations across institutions, are specifically cited as she scrutinizes the institutional inclination towards "renewal,” packaged as congratulatory tales of resilience. Sharpe cautions against the danger associated with the label of “resilience,” emphasizing that it tends to confine itself to individualized narratives, rather than facilitate a shift towards a collective approaches to addressing systemic sources of violence.

In his contribution to SDUK15: CONFIDING, Tonatiuh López reflects on his roles and responsibilities upon returning to his hometown of Ecatepec de Morelos, Mexico. López highlights the systemic failures in addressing gender-based violence, particularly the tendency of media and government officials to editorialize violence against women. Upon his return, he joined Museo Arte Contemporáneo Ecatepec (MArCE), an artist collective that supports women in reclaiming their space and agency. In 2021, MArCE hosted the Laboratory of Intersectional Journalism for Women and Feminized Bodies, workshops aiming to empower participants and challenge media narratives. This effort will culminate in the publication, La Vigilanta, a forthcoming periodical. López underscores the importance of fostering discussion and community relationships in the absence of safe public spaces. He notes that while rewriting statistics may seem impossible, creating spaces for dialogue is crucial.

In continuing to think about how to make visible the informal social bonds we hold with one another in shared public space, Jessica Lynn Whitbred's project, Tea Time: Mapping Internal Networks of Women Living with HIV, is a work that carves out space for women with HIV to network, self-advocate, and share their experiences. On World AIDS Day, Whitbred hosted a tea party at the Blackwood Gallery, where participants exchanged teacups and letters with one another, creating a network of care, centering the voices of women, and creating a site of communal knowledge exchange.

Violence against women is also intertwined with settler colonial interests of resource extraction from the land.  In SDUK02: COMMUTING, Michelle Murphy's Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Reactions discusses the chemical violences inflicted on bodies and communities. Murphy draws attention to Violence on the Land, Violence on Our Bodies: Building an Indigenous Response to Environmental Violence by the Women's Earth Alliance and Native Youth Sexual Health Network. This project features portraits of Indigenous women, 2-Spirit people, and youth, mapping the extensive infrastructural relations of settler-colonial capitalism embedded in their bodies. Additionally, artist and activist Emily Johnson’s 9-minute soundwork serves as a call-to-action to recognize the interconnectedness between extractive industries and the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2-Spirit people. Johnson appeals for the embodiment justice:

Making space for grieving alongside the violence of encountering death can provide a means to acknowledge the weight of loss and foster healing.  In an exploration of grief, Mourning School, initiated by Lucie Gottlieb and Rosa Paardenkooper, grounds into individual and collective voices in Start Slow, Feel the Vibrations in Your Gut, a text and accompanying 11-minute soundwork published in SDUK14: LINGERING. In conversation with The Queer Death Studies Network, they remind us that even in death, there is inequality, posing questions such as: “how can we scream, sob, wail, moan, and cry louder for those who are deemed ungrievable? How can we make sure that we are all loud when we’re dead?”

This fall, The Blackwood partnered with facilitator and printmaker Clara Lynas to host two workshops in advance of and as part of Take Back the Night (TBTN), an annual community-wide anti-violence rally and march hosted by Peel Committee Against Women Abuse. During these workshops, community members created signs of solidarity to share messages of strength, outrage, and the need for systemic change, while learning about available community resources.  In the spirit of making visible community resources and considering the inquiry, “how may we look at difficult images with accountability?,” a list of resources and support is available here.