April 2020 officially marks the 19th anniversary of national Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM). The Sexual Assault Awareness Month Virtual Exhibition is an online gallery show intended to raise awareness about themes such as sex and gender-based violence, relationship abuse, bystander intervention, and recovery.
This exhibition may contain work that is triggering to some individuals. We encourage you to seek support from campus, local and national services. For information about the University's response to sexual misconduct, including resources, accommodations, reporting options, national and local support organizations, and more, visit uarts.edu/titleix.
The making of this piece was a therapeutic process in which I processed trauma. I often work with body casts from my own body. Handling a delicate plaster version of myself allows me to rewrite my personal narrative and feel empowered. Although some have perceived this piece as being about pleasure or desire, my perception of this work is that it depicts an anxious fear or even a stressful fever dream in which various stranger's fingers crawl towards my most private orifice and treat me as a landscape to be conquered.
This piece started with no plan and a goal of improving the way I abstract imagery. I started with random lines and shapes and then pulled an image from what my mind saw in those random marks. However, as I pulled out the image, I realized just how much the imagery and the paint application was rather violent. Since I let myself pursue whatever my mind saw at that moment, I was able to actually release a lot of pent up energy and feelings from a time in my life when I was going through a lot of not-so-great things. This piece has become representative of my feelings about that moment in time. It has become about control, or really it is about regaining it. This piece is both a breakthrough in my practice and in my grip on my connection to my own emotions and experiences. This is the first piece in what I plan to be a series of working in this process-based fashion.
Created digitally in photoshop, using a Wacom Intuos 5 tablet. Visualization of how the desecration of flesh distorts body and soul. A body violated becomes a cage, and wounds left by violent hands rob an individual of security.
Untitled
By: Marisa Faller
*Dedicated to those associated with assault in a relationship*
You bury me in moments
Then cover me in my own fragility
I am strong
I am strong
Your fingers are poorly sewn into my shoulders
And I witness my blood on your brow
But I do not cry out
‘Do you think you would still love me with a noose around my neck?’
You bite my tongue
And grip my arms with your razor sharp conceit
‘Aren’t I the one who put it there?’
I do not cry out
**
I raise my eyes to the heavens
Where God has anchored my soul
I am from elsewhere
That I am sure
I have the body of others
But sometimes it seems that I speak a language nobody knows
I am on a constant search for someone or something to comprehend
Me
Or can at least translate
So that I can be a part of the world They put me in
Why did You anchor my body to this ground?
When I find my peace,
Will You return me
To Your so-called “promised land”
**
It’s a game
You know
You can fuck me with your lies
And rip at my femininity with your so-called “righteousness”
But my soul is from elsewhere
That I am sure
And you can’t
Molest
or
Distort
My dreams
Digital and physical collage
A work about male sexual assault victims in the time of technology.
Arcylic. This piece is based on an issue I'm extremely passionate about and appears in many of my artworks, human trafficking. A globalized industry of selling literal human beings. Human trafficking is an issue that is very closely tied to sexual assault. This piece is meant to evoke an extreme response from the viewer and forces you to confront the pain and suffering survivors of the industry have endured. This piece was done in black and white acrylic paint and took me approximately four months to complete.
Hasselblad camera, black and white medium format film, digital scanner
This image was taken as part of my current thesis project. In this project I am exploring relationships and how my identity has changed as I grow. This specific image is meant to show the distance that I put between the people in my life to appease my family, more specifically that distance between my partner and I at times. As it becomes harder to share my identity with my family, I have to distance myself for not only them, but also the parts of my life, such as my romantic relationship, I keep from them.
