Corinne Whitaker: Battered

Artist(s):

Corinne Whitaker

Title:

Battered

Exhibition:

SIGGRAPH 1998: Touchware

Creation Year:

1998

Medium:

Mixed media

Size:

25" x 28" x 8"

Artist Statement:

BATTERED

By a fist, a weapon, a cruel threat.
Beaten down in body.
Shattered in spirit.

Just as a boxer’s fists are considered lethal weapons outside of the ring,
so the superior physical strength of men should be acknowledged and reined in.

Any man, anywhere, who threatens a woman or child with physical violence should be guilty of a crime.

Any man, anywhere, who uses his physical strength against a woman or child should be guilty of a crime.

No code to crack.
No politicospeak to decipher.
No excuses. Ever.
HURT A WOMAN. HURT A CHILD. GO TO PRISON.

No need for spin control, or independent counsels.
Just a law, so simple that it cannot be misconstrued.

HURT A WOMAN. HURT A CHILD. GO TO JAIL.

So that no woman, ever again, will ever be …

Battered.

Corinne Whitaker, 1998

“Touch-Me-Not”

There is a space inside the human heart that cannot be touched, that holds itself aloof and deigns to be seen. Perhaps it is the space where I stop and you begin, where the boundaries of being stand firm, the soft sculpture of our souls. In that inviolate place, we hide our terrors and our tears, close the door to inquiry, and touch only a deep sense of isolation. Somewhere in that inner space jungle lies the essence of being human, and that is the quest that these images undertake. Out of the formless void, Nature’s paintbrush yielded us. Something from nothing, beings differentiated from infinite space by boundaries of skin and bone, hair and nails. And set apart from each other by centuries of polite convention.

The soul in its insanity crouches in that wild terrain. It is the artist who dares to embark on a perilous journey into the Amazon of identity, daring to touch what we would forever hide.

Corinne Whitaker 1998