DARkly FURgotten

DARkly FURgotten

Months ago I heard a radio interview in which a doctor in Darfur described his makeshift hospital and many of the horrible wounds he was treating. He spoke, somewhat matter-of-factly, of a woman who came to him with her wrists cut nearly to the bone. She had been hung from a tree limb and gang raped by the Janjaweed militia for three days. Her story is woven into my art.......... I have sewn her amidst a sea of trees representing Darfur’s countless victims. She holds a replica of Earth based on a EUMETSAT satellite image of our planet and asks “will our story remain darkly forgotten?”

The atrocities in Dafur are many..........men and children are killed (estimates range from 80,000 to 400,000) and maimed, women are raped by the thousands by the Arab Janjaweed ("evil men on horseback") army and then branded with fire and knives. An estimated 90% of black villages have been destroyed and 2.5 million are refugees living in fear.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,702074,00.html?iid=chix-sphere
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/20/60II/main650457.shtml

What will WE do about Darfur?

To Gwen Magee..... my heartfelt respect for your blog and your willingness to have a conversation about censorship and about art in response to social issues, all presented with meaningful quotes and wonderful information about textile resources.........thank you!
http://creativityjourney.blogspot.com/

Postscript:

I have had so many questions about the woman's eyes and why they are seemingly green, I would like to copy an answer I wrote in expanation:

To answer your excellent question about her eyes........they really are brown! I started with dark brown eyes and changed them to light brown because I wanted the black irises to show up better. Surprisingly to me, when I finished the work and added the green silk charmeuse scarf at the very end, those lighter brown eyes caught the green in the scarf so well they appear to be green. But if you look closely you will see they are brown.

The face itself is based on a famous Benin mask of the Bibi tribe that is housed in a London museum.

http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_Of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=5&viewMode=0&item=1978.412.323

I chose the copper colored dupioni for her face because the mask itself is a beautiful copper color. I wanted to copy the mask because it was beautiful and regal and, except for her eyes (in which I tried with the pupils to convey a hidden hysteria) my intent was to evoke a proud woman, not necessarily a helpless victim.

I have since learned that women in Darfur who are raped by the Janjaweed must "mask their shame" from their community so my basing the face on a mask gained new meaing for me.