Seduction and entrapment
Art helps human trafficking survivor heal
“It all started with a cage,” Robin Zee says.
That might easily be a metaphor for her life. But she is talking about how her installation at You Me Gallery began.
The installation, Courtship and Deceit, focuses on human trafficking. It is clear and succinct.
Zee, a writer, performer, public speaker and counsellor, has been living in Hamilton for 13 years. She describes herself as a survivor of human trafficking.
“I was sexually abused at a very young age,” she tells me. “By the age of eight or nine I was being rented out to others. I spent what feels like a lifetime being trafficked. I grew up feeling as if I am a commodity and my purpose in life had already been carved out for me. My dreams never had a chance to magnify themselves.
“At the age of 34, I escaped that life and began my healing journey, which continues to this day.”
She is 62.
Her healing includes a one-woman show, “BorderLineMe,” and more recently a book, “BorderLineMe, Beyond the Edge.” And then, “one night I had a dream of this art installation,” she says. So she got Melanie Skene and Liam Graham involved.
The installation comprises three main components. The first one meets us on entry and offers objects typically associated with courtship and pleasure. There’s a chair covered with a soft red cushion, a table with a bottle of champagne and two glasses, and a gift bag with a black fur coat. The floor is strewn with pink and red paper rose petals and paper hearts.
Opaque plastic curtains beckon us. If we enter, we can’t see what will happen next. But we’ve been seduced into feeling secure and comfortable.
Seduction soon leads to entrapment. Once through the curtains, we encounter the second component: a cage with a life-size figure of a woman sitting inside.
One side of the cage is open. One foot lies outside it, but she seems too weak to leave. Strings hang ominously above the cage. Who is pulling them? Not her.
Pieces of paper stuck to the walls contain phrases that reveal guilt and fear. An audio recording echoes the phrases.
The figure, “a kind of puppet sculpture hybrid,” according to Skene, took her about a month to construct using a wire armature, papier mâché, Styrofoam and oven-baked clay. Her skin consists of excerpts from articles about human trafficking. Skene calls her “The Girl.”
“She is intended to look like a marionette-style puppet with strings attached,” Skene tells me.
“Her head and arms do move so she could be performed. A puppet by definition is an inanimate object that is imbued with life-force by a puppeteer, and puppets are very diverse creatures. Of course ‘puppet’ or ‘pulling someone’s strings’ metaphorically refers to someone who is being manipulated by someone else.”
Skene makes a variety of puppets, marionettes, masks and sculptures, some more fantastical than others.
“When creating mythological or folktale beings I am a little more free to play with proportions and exaggerated features. Having the correct proportions as well as realistic-looking eyes felt really important for ‘The Girl,’ but she is still otherworldly with her text-based skin and cardboard hair. I didn’t want to make her look realistic. She is a puppet after all.”
The final piece, at the back of the gallery, comprises a black chair, a red dress and a pair of black high heels with sequins. Both dress and shoes are the kind of clothes worn to seduce. But the wearer is not a powerful seductress. Her abandoned dress and shoes suggest that she, stripped of her clothes, is being raped.
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.