'Anti-conference' expresses human rights grievances through the arts

Human rights issues, intriguing and critical to the lives of millions, need not be presented in a boring way, said Mark Gibney, UNC Asheville political science professor. That’s why Saturday’s Visualizing Human Rights Anti-Conference featured art instead of lectures, he said.

“We felt we were boring everyone to death. We thought that the very legal style, the very legal approach to human rights, was off-putting and boring. We thought maybe the artist can bridge that gap,” Gibney said.

That bridge is the anti-conference, with area artists taking photos or doing sculptures, murals, fixtures or performances, Gibney said. All of the art relates to human rights.

“We’re excited to have them, and they’re excited to be asked to be involved,” Gibney said.

The reason for art, instead of papers or presentations, is simple, Gibney said.

“I think there’s more of an immediacy with that than just people reading about it,” he said. “When I mention this to people, they’re all dumbfounded.”

Exhibits included the final version of local artist Luzene Hill’s art fixture, located in the Highsmith Gallery. In the fixture, dried rose petals represented victims of rape in the United States. Every day, Hill or a volunteer at the gallery added more petals until the exhibit was filled with rose petals. However, Hill almost shut the exhibit down, she said.

“Someone came in and got down on their hands and knees and made quick sweeping arm motions,” she said.

The petals were scattered all over the floor. Hill said she was devastated, and she hopes whoever did it acted out of ignorance, not malice.

“A lot of them were crushed,” Hill said. “I considered leaving it.”

Hill said she left the exhibit open to begin with because the topic, sexual violence, includes a component of fragility that she said needed to be expressed.

“It really was crushing to me. I felt violated again,” Hill said. “I thought about leaving it and locking the door for the rest of the two weeks. That was my first reaction.”

Hill said she returned the petals to their original places.

“You can’t do this again,” Hill said. “This is my work, and I’m not going to allow you to do this.”

Another event, “Anonymous Was a Woman,” featured a woman who told poetry about life in a burqa. She stayed anonymous for the sake of expressing what that life is like, she said.

“Maybe it should be ‘Anonymous Was a Muslim Woman,’” she said.

The poetry recitation included her own works, classical poetry and lines from women and girls living with the burqa, she said.

“I could see through so many angles I found that art is the best dipstick of all our humanity,” she said.

Topics covered included sexuality, puberty and morality. She spoke specifically about debate topics from the Middle East that were funny.

“They have burqas that are made of blue jeans with rhinestones on them,” she said.

She said such displays are a major part of social debate because they involved sex and objectification.

“If you have this in one extreme, the other extreme that’s just as objectifying is the ‘Hello, this is my cleavage garb,’” she said.

She also talked about the burqa as being positive from a feminist perspective.

“It is freeing in that having to think about what the hell you have to wear is a process that we have to let go of anyway,” she said. “Fun fact: Covered women are the biggest, largest consumers of kinky undergarments. You would be embarrassed to wear this stuff alone.”

To answer the question of why women wear the burqa to begin with, she recited a piece written by a 14-year-old girl named Aisha.

“Beneath the black folds, there is the possibility of red hair or blond,” she said. “The imagination creates the illusion that he might be marrying a different woman and not the truth, that it’s always us,” she said.

Gibney said the event was a great chance to change the world in a novel and interesting way.

“This is something new and exciting. It went awfully well last year, awfully well. We’re just trying to recreate some of that,” Gibney said.

1 comments

Todd Drake

Mon Nov 30 2009 19:27

This anti-conference was fantastic! More community involvement than last year's. Now UNC has a raised bar to beat!

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