WUNRN
Heartbreaking “Shrine for Girls” Pays Tribute to Young Female
Martyrs Around the World
Photo
by Doug Schwab
By
Priscilla Frank – 4/14/2015
"Shrine for
Girls," Cronin's upcoming site-specific installation appears at the 16th
century Chiesa di San Gallo, part of the Venice Biennale.
Initially, the piece simply resembles a colorful pile of clothing; garments
worn throughout the world. However, the solemn and jarring piece actually
honors the young women from around the world whose lives were unjustly cut
short.
The work addresses
three horrific atrocities that plagued girls around the time of the piece's
inception: the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria; the two teens gang raped, murdered and hung from trees in India;
and the young women forced into labor at the Magdalene asylums and laundries in Ireland.
"These people,
when they were alive, weren't treated with any dignity," Cronin states. "Their
bodies are gone. The idea then of looking at clothing without bodies inside
them seemed to be a poetic, powerful and poignant metaphor."
To
create her work, the artist sourced hijabs from Africa, saris from India and
aprons from the U.K. She then brought all of the materials together under one
roof, piled them on the church's altars, and added dramatic spotlights. When
she first visited the Chiesa di San Gallo, Cronin was struck by the way the
three stone altars mimicked the three horrific stories of women's suffering.
Next to each pile she added a small, framed photograph taken during the
corresponding tragic event.
Curated
by Ludovico Pratesi and produced by The Brooklyn Rail Curatorial Projects, the
piece took inspiration from artists like Sophie Calle and Bill Viola, who, too,
transformed religious places of worship into sites for art. "Hopefully
when the people walk into the space they're not walking into a white box
gallery," Cronin said. "They know they're walking into a space that
speaks about solemnity."
Patricia
Cronin, Chibok Student #2, 2015
Cronin hopes the
beauty, reverence and magnitude that often characterize a church atmosphere
will contribute to the overall power of the work. "In a church, people are
a little bit quieter, they slow down a little bit, which is necessary here. I
mean, the numbers that are involved in the horrible things happening to women
around the world are staggering. What do you do with the statement 110,000,000 women are missing? That's what Amartya Sen,
economist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said in 1990. "What do you do with that number?"
The
artist anticipates the visceral jab of empty garments, piled and unworn, will
help viewers realize the magnitude of the global crimes that often feel so far
away. "They say there's this thing called the 'identifiable victim
effect,'" Cronin said. "Which basically says 'one death is a tragedy,
1,000 deaths is just a statistic.' My goal was: how do we get people to focus
on what's happening to women and girls around the world? How do I un-numb
people, and you and me?"
Although
the work hasn't yet debuted to the public, visitors to Cronin's studio have
reacted with "a range from goosebumps to tears," Cronin said. "As
one curator said to me, 'it's a real punch to the stomach.'"
Cronin also provides
her viewers with easy next steps, ways to get involved with the issues for
which she advocates. Text inside the church lists three organizations striving
to change girls' futures for the better: one is the Campaign for Female
Education (Camfed), which
funds women's education and helps girls become leaders in sub-Saharan Africa;
another, Gulabi Gang,
Cronin describes as a "group of pink, sari-wearing female activists in
India"; and then Justice for Magdalenes, an Ireland-based organization
that works to ensure survivors of the Magdalene Laundries are acknowledged,
protected and never forgotten. Cronin plans to donate 10 percent of any profits
from the artistic endeavor to the listed associations.
Accompanying the
installation, a banner reads "Shrine for Girls" in the 14 most
commonly spoken languages around the world, seemingly to sum up the
simultaneous accessibility and brutality of the entire shrine itself. As Cronin
puts it: "I want people to come to this venue from all over the world, and
say, 'Wow, this is speaking to me, too.' But it also says, 'The problem is
everywhere.'"
"Shrine for Girls" runs from May 6 until Nov. 22, 2015,
at the Chiesa di San Gallo in Venice, as part of the Venice Biennale.