ARTIST STATEMENT
After second grade, I went away to summer camp for two weeks. My mother picked me up and we took a cab but I did not recognize the route. When we crossed a bridge, I knew for sure then that we were not heading home. My mother remained silent in response to my continuous questioning—the budding journalist in me. The cab pulled in front of a house. She took me inside and opened the door to a room. My eyes quickly glanced around, spotting my shoes in the closet, my books on the bureau, and my Cabbage Patch Kid doll on the bed pillow. I immediately said to myself, “We’re safe now.”
My mom had finally escaped from an abusive marriage, taking nothing but the clothes on her back and her children’s belongings; and moved us from our apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan to a childhood friend’s brownstone in the Bronx. In every city I have lived since, I commit to volunteering at a domestic violence shelter, encountering hundreds of women who did not have the option that was presented to my mother.
The SAFE HOUSE documentary exhibit seeks to capture the sense of “safety” and “home” created by personal objects and spaces for survivors moving from violence in the household, to emergency shelters and safe houses, through transitional housing, and finally settling into an affordable home of their own. As part of my 2013 domestic violence awareness advocacy through the AWARE Project, I have also designed the “Celebrate Safety” public awareness campaign to coincide with this exhibit. Special thanks to Polaris Press for sponsoring 100 posters of the four core messages.
Over 50 color images are offered in the SAFE HOUSE book, along with inspiring stories about the brave survivors I have met through this project, the history and current resources of the agencies supporting this sector, and an examination of affordable housing public policies that support increased funding and incentives for the development and expansion of properties available to this vulnerable demographic.
In the midst of the affluence cultivated and cherished in Greater Prince William and our surrounding areas, it is my hope that my work will put faces and voices to the need that can be too easily obscured and hidden. If survivors can gird up the courage to leave abusive situations, so too can we rally and leverage an equal courage to help provide them a safe place to heal and rebuild their lives.
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