I’m very sad to say nothing has changed. It’s very sad because we know so much more.
Women explore their feelings in art exhibit making 15-stop tour
Jane Doe was there for the Ottawa opening of Sexual Assault: The Roadshow on Thursday.
Jane Doe is not her real name. It has been almost two decades since she won a lawsuit case against Toronto police for failing to protect women after Paul Douglas Callow, the infamous “balcony rapist,” entered her downtown apartment, held a knife to her throat and raped her in 1986. She launched the lawsuit soon after, and was awarded damages of $220,000 plus interest in 1998.
“I’m very sad to say nothing has changed. It’s very sad because we know so much more,” said Doe, who is still an activist and writer.
After all these years, the publication ban that prohibits printing Doe’s real name or photographic image is still in place. But on Thursday, she was showing visitors around the roadshow, a shipping container that features paintings, photographs and other art about sexual assault. The artwork is the product of workshops in communities across the province. Doe is the roadshow’s project director. The artistic director is Lillian Allen, an award-winning hip hop artist, dub poet and writer.
For her, Doe said the hardest thing to do would be to stop being a critic of the police and the legal system. “This is the best thing I ever did in my life,” she said after offering a tour of the shipping container, which has been set up on a vacant lot at 250 Montreal Rd., a space donated for the month by the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens, a teachers’ union.
“The response has been amazing — joy, tears, laughter, resistance, subversion. Art lets us address the subject in a different language.”
Among the artwork on display was a series of alternative posters made by teenage girls on the messages they would like to see about sex assault. “Sleeping Beauty was a sexual assault victim,” reads one poster. Another is drawn as a to-do list: “Groceries, vacuum, make third call to cop who hasn’t returned my messages since I was sexually assaulted, laundry, fix window.”
There are a series of “spirit paintings” by women from the Ohsweken, a First Nations community near Brantford. There’s a group of puppets made by women in Peterborough who were channelling their “inner cheerleaders and critics.” Another exhibit is a series of photographs of tattoos, including one submitted by Glen Canning, the father of Rehtaeh Parsons, the Nova Scotia teen who died in 2013 following a suicide attempt. In 2011, a digital photo of Parsons’ alleged sexual assault was circulated in her high school, and her family says Rehtaeh was relentlessly cyberbullied.
In the photo submitted by Canning, taken only a few weeks before her death, Parsons is unabashedly displaying a tattoo on her index finger that reads “F—k off.”
“Tattoos are a new narrative to resistance. ‘Do you think you’ve marked me?’ Their bodies are talking back,” said Doe.
Ottawa is the ninth of 15 stops that the roadshow has in its three-year run, which ends next year. Last September, the roadshow, funded by the Ontario Arts Council, set up in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto, moving later to the gritty Bathurst and Dundas neighbourhood.
Yami Msosa, a support worker with the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Ottawa, is one of the hosts of the roadshow. She says one in three women and one in six men will be the victim of sexual violence in their lifetimes. The risk is even higher for Indigenous women. This artwork “talks back” to sexual violence, she said. The exhibit also offers the opportunity to connect with people and let them know about the resources available in the city.
“It’s not just an exhibit. It’s a referral space,” Msosa said.
Before the roadshow leaves Ottawa on Aug. 28, there will be four workshops, including a full moon yoga session for sexual assault survivors on Aug. 7, a session with watercolourist Mahvash Mortazavi on Aug. 10, and one with slam poet Roselyne DJ on Aug. 17. Details on the fourth workshop are still being ironed out. (For more details and to register, visit sascottawa.com/ how-can-we-help/theroadshow/)
John Warner wiped tears from his eyes as he walked through the exhibit. He was once a convener for a group of survivors of sexual assault and said he was curious when he noticed the shipping container while he was eating at a restaurant across the street.
“I’m glad I came,” he said. “I believe in what they’re doing here.”