The piece fills a wall of the gallery with small video monitors. Each monitor shows the mouth of an anonymous domestic violence survivor or child of a survivor as she or he recounts a personal experience of abuse. Together, the multiple voices create a symphony of unrecognizable words. Only when viewers come closer to the wall and focus on an individual screen do they become aware of the installation’s topic and the individual subject’s story. The necessity of this movement on the part of viewers functions as a call to action: as a society, we must not allow the epidemic of domestic violence and those who are affected by it to remain invisible; an inaudible crowd of statistics. Instead, we must de-stigmatize domestic violence and empower survivors to break free from the cycle of abuse by valuing their individual histories and futures. Alongside the video monitors will be a video of a performance that acts as a metaphor for another facet of domestic violence: the repetitive cycle of the victim returning to their abuser.
The installation includes women filmed in Miami, NY, CT and Chicago.
A Solo Exhibition by Cat Del Buono
