faceless is a movement

Febu­rary 25 end­ed in hugs among sis­ters, tears in eyes, and the on­ward move­ment one ware­house filled with as­tound­ing artists brought to life.

This was Art­Street in Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia. It went on through­out the month of Feb­ru­ary 2017 in an old ware­house.
 

 

There is a light to be cast­ed onto a dark ex­hib­it specif­i­cal­ly one held down a black nar­row hall­way. Cas­cad­ed in dif­fer­ent places pho­tos of women in­grained into the wood they were print­ed on and as the month of Feb­ru­ary went by well over 48,000 red dot stick­ers lit­tered these walls.
 

 

Sarah Marie Hawkins, the artist, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, ac­tivist, and flom­mist brought mov­ing art into the tears of so many who found them­selves with­in this ex­hib­it. Sacra­men­to a com­mu­ni­ty she has work in for over 6 years, and one she de­scribes as hun­gry for the arts wel­comed her through M5arts with a plat­form.

Her project Face­less No More has been dreamt in her mind for years. Com­ing from a place of be­ing a sex­u­al sur­vivor her­self, Sarah de­vel­oped a space that for sur­vivors they could see the sol­i­dar­i­ty of the thou­sands who placed stick­ers on the wall. The greater cause of this hall­way was to set­tle the minds of those who say

“I un­der­stand”

in the face of a sex­u­al as­sault vic­tim but have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced it.

For those Sarah says, “No, you don’t and that is okay. I don’t want you to un­der­stand. I wish no­body did. But I just want your sup­port.”

Face­less No More was about fi­nal­ly fac­ing this is­sue, not only for the sur­vivors in­volved but our so­ci­ety we are a prod­uct of. In these halls, Sarah de­signed a space one could not run from, flee from like we do with things we are in fear of.

Here, if some­one was in front of you stopped in their tracks read­ing, you be­came the same. As the red dots were an or­gan­ic sym­bol of sup­port for the sur­vivors, they also in­volved the view­er and if you are in­volved per­haps it’ll stay longer in your mind rather than be­ing for­got­ten about like the sad an­i­mal com­mer­cial on tele­vi­sion. No one per­son was dis­qual­i­fied to be in­volved.
 

 

The process of mak­ing this was a jux­ta­po­si­tion. Her aim was to take back every­thing. To take back their words, their ex­pe­ri­ence, and their bod­ies. So, every ounce of the pho­tos, the sto­ries, was all by choice.

It’s im­por­tant to point this out too: Yes, there was nu­di­ty in the pho­tographs. Some­thing Sarah had not done be­fore be­sides for a small num­ber of com­mer­cial pieces. In what hap­pens to those in these sit­u­a­tions is a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that is stolen, that is forced from you. Here, it was all by choice. That re­claimed the voice, the de­ci­sion, the body, and the per­son them­selves as they posed in strong, em­pow­ered, straight po­si­tions.

Rape and Sex­u­al As­sault by Sarah’s own words is not a side ef­fect of drink­ing, it is not a side ef­fect of wear­ing some­thing provoca­tive and the on­go­ing list of rea­sons why “we were ask­ing for it.”

No mat­ter what you do or say, no­body is en­ti­tled to you.

In this, there is so many things peo­ple can get from this, and what she wish­es for all.

For sur­vivors, she hopes that with every red dot, every sto­ry they see a sis­ter or broth­er in arms.

To – for once – not feel alone or iso­lat­ed. To re­al­ize, this is some­thing that hap­pened to you, it does not de­fine you, and it is not you. No longer does any­one need to be ashamed. And last­ly, we no longer should be­lieve there is noth­ing we can do about this, even if we can­not con­vict our per­pe­tra­tor, we can bring sup­port to oth­ers fac­ing this.
 

 

The facts are record­ed from a re­peat­ed study since 1998:

·  2.8 mil­lion men have been sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed and raped
·  17.7 mil­lion women have been sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed and raped
·  1 in 6 women or girls have been ei­ther sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed, rape or an at­tempt has been made
·  93% of mi­nors, 17 and un­der knew the prepara­tor
·  And Usu­al­ly, not in every case, but al­most al­ways it is men com­mit­ting the as­sault both on women and men.

The mi­nor­i­ty that ex­ists are those who have not been sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed.

“I am not the sole artist of this project. There are 20 oth­er women, artists, that made this project. And the point of Face­less is to take it fur­ther. To give it a show of its own, to take it to ma­jor cities and col­lege cam­pus­es, and make it spe­cif­ic to every lo­ca­tion. To rep­re­sent that rape knows no lo­ca­tion, and no class. That way, on a max­i­mum lev­el we can ed­u­cate those who this has not touched.”
 

 

Face­less, a por­trait by words and not of faces, isn’t a lit­er­al mean­ing. It’s a play on words. It is fac­ing this is­sue as a sur­vivor, as a friend, fam­i­ly mem­ber, ther­a­pist or sup­port­er, as a so­ci­ety to no longer deny its ef­fects, or ex­is­tence.

Face­less is a move­ment.

 
 

—al­ley schef­f­ki

Flom­mist Al­ley Schef­f­ki is 23 years young, ‘I am the blue rose. Dies ist ein wun­sch für frei­heit.’ Copy­right © 2017 Al­ley Schef­f­ki. Fo­tos of Face­less No More at Art­Street by mehal­lo.

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