This work is based around the theme of sexual coercion and the emotional impact on the victim that follows. The issue is personal, and I have been distraught on the way people have handled it. I have largely seen people push it to the side, trying to ignore it, including myself; this seems to be due to society’s lack of comfortability with the thoughts and the conversation. I have also seen the way it is passed down as a learned behavior – generational; I find it strange that this is a learned behavior that is so ingrained and yet, continues to go unaddressed. I am therefore addressing this problem along with some of the emotions present including sadness, helplessness, anger, and numbness. To convey these emotions, in part, I explored space and how much of the space the subject is taking up. I also explored this idea of submissiveness and dominance – placing the viewer in compromising positions which interact with the subject; these vantage points will then evoke these emotions in the viewer and place them into my mindset. 

 

I was intrigued with this idea of the body becoming the furniture; we use household objects such as chairs, kitchen utensils, gloves for as long as we need them, and then they are cast to the side. Wrapping paper is destroyed; it is a cover to get to the essence of what we desire underneath. Of course, we are not concerned with our treatment of these objects, as they are simply objects. Is a body simply that then, an object? I leave with that question, as I leave with Passing Down the Woman’s Body which questions the learned hereditary nature of sexual coercion, as it is society’s decision to decide their role as a lens, perpetrator, or activist. The role as a victim is not a decision, but that is something that is not so apparent in some eyes it seems.