Posts by Kelly Spellman
Advocacy, Super-Sized
Published October 27, 2009 @ 04:26AM PT
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is it worth if it's 7 feet tall and 10 feet wide?
The New York Times photojournalism blog, Lens recently did a feature on the project Congo/Women, a traveling exhibit created by the Art Works Projects. This exhibit, currently housed at the United Nations in New York, displays the devastating impact that decades of conflict, HIV/AIDS and rape as a war tactic have had on women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The difference is that the pictures are far from your traditional gallery size -- they are larger than life.
In the article, "Behind the Scenes: Suffering Writ Large," Leslie Thomas, the founding executive director of Art Works Projects explains that the massive images of the Congo/Women exhibit were meant to "grab the attention of those not normally concerned with human rights."
In 2006 and 2007 the Art Works Projects released another traveling multimedia exhibit called Darfur/Darfur that included huge projected photographs and music, documenting the lives of people experiencing the conflict in Darfur. The images were digitally displayed on walls of the venue spaces.
Though I have not had the opportunity to see these exhibits in person, after going through the Lens article and the Art Works Project websites for both projects, seeing the images was both moving and haunting. I can only imagine the effect they can have when they are wall-sized and impossible to miss. According to Lens, one of the current Congo exhibit portraits is placed right outside of the General Assembly chamber, and I cannot think of a more appropriate place for it.
I know that the Darfur exhibit made its way to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and that the Congo exhibit was shown at Senate and House office buildings earlier this year, but a part of me wonders if maybe a semi-permanent installation should go up in the Capitol Hill area of this nation's capital -- a daily reminder to both those who work and visit that the decision we do (or do not) make have a monumental impact on the lives of individuals, families, and communities across the world.
[Photo of the Darfur/Darfur exhibit in New York by the Save Darfur Coalition, used with written permission from the organization.]
Oh, Hitler and His Hobbies
Published April 25, 2009 @ 07:47AM PT
I love art. I do. HOWEVER, I think it's safe to say that a chill went through my whole body when I read that artwork --- watercolors, oil paintings and pencil sketches --- created by Adolf Hitler was up for auction and fetched shockingly high bids.
When all was said and done, the work raised almost $120,000. In addition to the art, there were also historical documents and items "related to Hitler's time as the leader of Nazi Germany."
Rabbi Marvin Hier commented for the article and I would like to echo his sentiment that the purchase of the historical documents by institutions who intend to keep them to glean insight into a devastating part of history is understandable... but a part of me seriously wonders where some of those paintings will end up.
Giving Voice to Children’s Experience in War
Published April 11, 2009 @ 08:46AM PT
A few weeks ago Michelle posted a quote by Mother Theresa to open a discussion: "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." Regrettably, I did not participate in the discussion but it left me thinking long and hard about why my stomach lurches every time I read about genocide, mass violence and injustice in a newspaper or see pictures on the news. Because the way I see it, if I can dig beyond the ‘hard facts' to imagine the individual(s) involved, the people most impacted by these events are very real. Though they may not dress, speak, worship, eat or play exactly the way that I do, they are still the children who play practical jokes on each other, they are the teenagers who fall in love for the first time, the little boys who avoid their chores, the little girls who imitate their mothers and they are the families who know the grief of losing their home or livelihoods to forces beyond their control.
Memoirs are some of the best starting points for honing in on an understanding of ‘the one.' One of my favorites is a book called They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The true story of three Lost Boys from Sudan by Benson Deng, Alephosion Deng and Benjamin Ajak (with Judy A. Bernstein). In the 1980s, during the North-South civil war in Sudan, a group of approximately 27,000 boys --- many as young as five years old --- who had been orphaned or separated from their families by the violence that rained down on their villages by Sudanese government forces, migrated across the vast country to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. The book is told from all three boys' perspectives and takes the reader from memories of their childhood in their villages, through the initial violence, their trek across the country and into refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya to their resettlement in the United States.
