We Step Into the Light - "My Feel-Good Space"

"Art transcends all boundaries and can communicate beauty and triumph better than any language." Desmonette Hazly, Creater of We Step Into the Light

 

I recently had the amazing opportunity to participate to the exhibition "We Step Into the Light" on Cornell Campus, for which I displayed four photos for two weeks in the Mann Library and in the Women's Resource Center. This was a unique experience in many respects.  Yufei and I collaborated to give birth to "My Feel-Good Space", a selection of my photos that were representative of her passions and life.

 

"We Step Into the Light" is a project that was started by Dr. Desmonette Hazly in 2009 to bring awareness to the issues of sexual assault, relationship violence, stalking and gender based violence through art created for "thrivers," which is a term that has been chosen to replace the term "survivors".

The goal of this program is to empower thrivers and to provide a safe place for thrivers in various stages of the healing process to express themselves with the help of artists. Toward this aim, volunteer artists are paired up with thrivers and listen to them, learning about who they are as a whole person. Then, in a collaborative creative process with the thriver, the artists capture the essence of the thriver who lives a full life beyond the experience of sexual violence.

The art forms can include painting, photography, song, sculpture, poetry, music, jewelry, ceramics, etc.  and focus on the dreams, goals, passions and ambitions of the thriver rather than on the assault the thriver experienced. This project demonstrates how a thriver’s assault makes up a part of who they are, but does not define them as a person.