Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Club Congress Displays Art Against Sexual Harassment

Posted By on Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 11:07 AM

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The Hey Baby! Art Against Sexual Violence workshop, put on by the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault (SACASA), will continue its display of Hey Baby! Lights, in the lobby of Club Congress until May 3.

The art exhibit portrays themes related to sexual violence including the general interaction between men and women and the misogyny within our culture.

"I think the name itself is kind of a play on the kind of calls that women get on the street," said Manuel Abril, one of the contributing artists. "Which I think was pretty clever."

Abril created a series of artwork called "Nothing's Happening" in the past year which is meant to expose a culture that is often otherwise unseen.

"It's suggesting that ... the rape culture is in a way unmarked," Abril said. "So it makes it seem like nothing's happening."

Abril's series reflects the meaning of the entire Hey Baby! exhibit, according to Rowan Frost, program supervisor of community prevention education for SACASA.

"Survivor's voices are often silenced," Frost said. "Especially for young girls, they're told that nothing is happening, that they're exaggerating, they're making a big deal of nothing ... we don't see the effects of sexual violence on the person."

Other pieces include a video of people's faces as they're recorded saying what sexual assault means to them.

The intent of the galleries is to have people realize that it affects everyone in the community, not just the victims or perpetrators, according to Rowan. Once people are aware that it's a community issue they will hopefully start a conversation about the issue requiring a community solution, she added.

"The experiences that they've had affects them and ripples out to all of us," Frost said. "It affects the way that people have relationships with other people because we don't really know who we can trust and who we can't trust."

For more information about the Hey Baby! project visit https://www.facebook.com/HeyBaby.Art/info

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