Artist Jason Dilley poses in front of a student experiencing the "Unheard Voices" exhibit at Ithaca College's Handwerker Gallery last month.
Robert Barker/University Photography
"Kids when they're five don't make up stories like that."
"We'd had sex before, and I didn't see it as rape."
"You feel you must have done something wrong."
These are the voices of survivors of sexual assault, and Jason Dilley, a San Francisco -- based artist, believes they are too seldom heard. So he has given them a dramatic public hearing in a new art exhibit on its way to Cornell.
"Unheard Voices" features 11 facial castings and one full-body casting from survivors of rape and other forms of sexual violence, each accompanied by an audiotaped three-minute account that visitors can hear over headphones. Four of the castings and oral histories are from women living in the Ithaca area and were made this fall in the ceramics studio in Cornell's Willard Straight Hall.
"Unheard Voices" made its national premiere on Oct. 21 at Ithaca College's Handwerker Gallery, where it was on display through Nov. 2. It will be shown at Cornell's Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery Nov. 11-24, and it is free and open to the public. The Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery is located on the main floor; hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Friday. The public is invited to an opening reception at the gallery on Nov. 11, 4:30-6 p.m.; Dilley will attend.
"Unheard Voices" was brought to Ithaca largely by Andrea Parrot, Cornell associate professor of human service studies and nationally known expert on acquaintance and date-rape and their prevention.
Last year, after Dilley read Parrot's book Sexual Assault on Campus: The Problem and the Solution -- in which she writes that one in four American college women are victims of sexual assault but less than one percent of these assaults are reported -- he called her and described his idea for "Unheard Voices" as one way to break the silence. He explained that it would be modeled on his exhibit then (and still) on tour, "Project Face to Face," featuring plaster castings from people afflicted with AIDS.
When "Project Face to Face" came to Utica, N.Y., this past spring, Parrot went to see it -- and vowed to bring "Unheard Voices" to Ithaca, sight unseen, as soon as Dilley could complete it.
At the Ithaca College opening, approximately 75 visitors stood eye-to-eye with white face castings mounted on black panels. They gripped headphones transmitting harrowing tales of violence but also inspiring words of recovery; read quotes on plaques mounted throughout the gallery; and scribbled their own reactions on notes they posted on a "community wall."
"I designed this exhibit to be interactive," said Dilley, whose background is in theater arts.
Dilley said he sought people of different ages, genders and ethnic groups and whose experiences varied widely, from childhood incest to campus date rape to stranger rape, to demonstrate the pervasiveness of sexual violence in society.
Whether from AIDS patients or the sexually abused, the castings are "a powerful way to send a message and to spark dialogue about an issue that is difficult to talk about," Parrot said. "The 'Unheard Voices' exhibit can educate people on a much deeper, much more intimate level than traditional sexual assault prevention programs."
Parrot said the show's Ithaca debut has been the result of "a monumental joint collaboration," including Ithaca College, Ithaca Rape Crisis, the Child Sexual Abuse Project and the Cornell organization she co-founded and chairs, Cornell Advocates for Rape Education (CARE).
"Unheard Voices" will celebrate not only the courage of sexual assault victims, but the 10th anniversary of CARE, an advisory committee including 15 Cornell students, staff and faculty that was formed in 1986 "to work toward a community free of sexual exploitation and violence." One of the nation's first campus rape-prevention education programs, CARE has worked for a safer community through such efforts as:
·Producing two instructional videos for college and high-school audiences;
·Developing a series of informational brochures, including one sent to all incoming Cornell freshmen;
·Offering training and materials through seminars and conferences at Cornell and universities nationwide;
·Instigating changes in the Campus Code of Conduct to include as a violation "to sexually harass, abuse or assault, or to rape another person" (1990); and to allow victims of all types of harassment, abuse, assault or rape to testify at campus hearings without being in the same room as the defendant (1993); and
·Creating the position of a sexual assault education coordinator.
When CARE began in 1986, said that coordinator, Nina Cummings, "Only a handful of people were acknowledging acquaintance rape on college campuses. Cornell was one of the first places to educate students about these issues, not because they were more common here but because people were willing to listen. Over the years, the state of the art in terms of rape prevention education has changed, and a lot of that leadership has come from Cornell."
And from Parrot. One of the nation's leading authorities on date and acquaintance rape, she has discussed campus sexual assault and CARE's prevention efforts on such television programs as "Larry King Live," "CBS This Morning" and "Face the Nation." And she has written about, or been cited on, these issues for such publications as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Time magazine.
Parrot urged all members of the Cornell community to attend the exhibit and return with a friend during its two-week run in Willard Straight Hall. She noted that students can be trained to serve as docents or lead "facilitated viewings," in which groups from high schools, colleges and other institutions take guided tours preceded and followed by mediated discussions.
Whatever impact "Unheard Voices" has on visitors to the Willard Straight Gallery in mid-November, the exhibit has had a profound effect on the four Ithaca women whose images it includes. One, Michaelle, said having the casting made "was a lot harder than I had anticipated emotionally. I had to remain immobile as the cast was being set, and I felt powerless."
"Participating in this project has been hard," she said. "But I'd do it again."