Simple Truths weaves the memories of war and the realities of post war into a rich Cambodian tapestry − a tapestry that reveals beneath the culturally ever ready smile and exotic costumes - the crushing effects and inhumanity of war. Six Cambodian women who lived through the "Pol Pot times ", the Vietnamese invasion and the US bombing, visually and through recorded voice bring basic but poignant truths of what women experience in war.
Robbed is an art installation about 4 young Bo girls abducted by rebel soldiers in Sierra Leone (Bo is a town in Sierra Leone ) The girls were between 8 and 14 when they were captured. All of them were used as labor and sex slaves. Most had children by their captors.
Life size photographs of the children bring the vulnerability of a child in war close to the exhibits audience . Short, sensor activated narratives tell their story.
Innocent is an exhibition on the impossible dilemmas and victimization that war puts upon children. It involves the reality of four young Sierra Leone children caught in the midst of the war. Two of the children were abducted and became child soldiers; two were abducted and became labor and sex slaves (sometimes to male child soldiers). Either as perpetrator, or as the oppressed, each child lost the right to control their own behaviour, their learning and their physical well-being. They were stripped of their innocence − they're right to be children. All the children became victims; all carry massive physical and psychological scars of war.
This artwork is simple and brutal. It speaks to the submission of the war victim to violence. It includes long narrow images of individual women and children from Sierra Leone and Cambodia . The images are enclosed in open painted boxes. The boxes lean against a wall. Between each box is a deactivated military rifle. A steel chain runs along the floor chaining the boxes to the rifles.
As visitors approach the exhibit they activate a sensor, which starts recordings of the girls recounting some of their experiences of war (interwoven with local women singing).. A rustic wood bench invites the visitor to sit and listen to the girl's voices. Depending on the galleries facilities either projected images or large photographs of the girls surround the bench
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