Throughout last week, the Community Violence Intervention Center at UND hosted the Clothesline Project, a national visual display that brings awareness and acknowledgement to forms of violence and those who have had to face it. The display, held in the Henry Family Ballroom of the Memorial Union, featured shirts of varying colors strung on clotheslines throughout the room, each color signifying a different story. There were also masks, earrings, and other varying representations of individuals who have experienced violence in some manner in their life.
Red shirts are displayed to represent children that have witnessed violence within their homes. Shades of blue and green are for survivors of childhood sexual abuse or incest. Pinks and oranges represent those who have been sexually assaulted or raped. Yellows are for those who have endured being battered or assaulted. Purples are displayed for those that have been attacked because of their sexual orientation or identity. Finally, white is to show memory of someone, adult or child, who has died because of violence.
The shirts are further personally decorated with varying messages, images, and stories told by survivors and those honoring someone lost to violence. They give statistics, dates and names, and personal thoughts and struggles with processing what happened. Many do, however, also show strength. Notes about surviving and reclaiming power despite what occurred.
Alongside the shirts there were also displays of earrings, decorated masks, and an empty dinner table. The earrings represented missing and murdered indigenous peoples, often one of a pair being displayed to represent someone who has been lost. The masks were representations of survivors of sexual assault, each one decorated differently to show the varying experiences that come along with that ordeal. The dining table was to show an empty place at a table, each space decorated with personal items and images, representing the space left behind when someone is lost to domestic violence.
In addition to the visual component, there was also an auditory element to the display; varying sounds that serve as reminders of violent acts and how often they occur. A gong would strike that signified someone being battered, a tangible representation of a statistic provided by the Clothesline Project that states that about 20 people per minute are physically abused in the U.S. A whistle would also blow to represent reported rapes, sharing that about every 73 seconds someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted, and every nine minutes that someone is a child. Finally, a bell would toll to represent those who have died due to violence.
These three sounds echoed around the room, filling the space with a heavy but poignant atmosphere that aided the visual display to serve as a reminder of just how prevalent interpersonal violence is and how anyone can become subjected to it. While this kind of display can be difficult to bear witness to, it is within that difficulty that people see how important it is to do so anyway. Bringing awareness of these issues and starting conversations is how change can begin to be made to minimize violence and better protect people from it.
Ed Tortorelli is a Dakota Student General Reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].
