Witness
If you’ve followed my art-making practice, you will have noticed that I have a thing for eyes. Symbolically, they represent for me among other things the observer, and both the silent and the silenced feminine.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the term “witness” lately, related of course to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as the overt fascist take-over in the US, which does not come as any surprise to me, because I was looking. I remember in 2016 when Trump won his first term, that I was just crying, because I knew then that the world was so deeply misogynistic that even this guy - this insult to humanity, this final proof of why we have said over and over again that it’s dangerous to let people get so rich that they can buy power when they have earned absolutely none of it - this guy could become the “most powerful man” in the world. People, WOMEN, were applauding this man. I understood clearly in that moment that we were all caught in an abusive relationship, that too few of us knew how to get out of.
Now, 9 years later, it’s hard to find much hope anywhere.
I grew up in a religious home, and went to church regularly, and even though I no longer believe the way I did then, there are concepts and values that I carry with me as a result of being raised in a spiritual home and family. And one thing that I remember being taught in Sunday school at church was about integrity represented by the martyrs who were killed because they would not abandon their beliefs, even in the face of certain death. Now at easter, I of course think of Peter, who denied following Jesus after he was crucified, in order to save his own skin, and the deep remorse that plagued him as a result of this. I think about the stories I was taught in church about people being burned alive and fed to lions by their oppressors, and still they wouldn't give in.
Sometimes, when we are faced with great cruelty and injustice, we are unable to do anything more than watch. Sometimes, being a witness means not looking away. But only until the moment you are able to act. And this is very important to understand. Because we who are watching from a safe position, should be mindful not to elevate our passive watching of events unfolding, to being a witness impacted by what is happening unless there’s also some sort of action on our part attached to it. Yes, it takes courage and strength to keep watching, but remember to ask yourself:
Am I watching this as a fixed and finite narrative, like a movie, as if it’s an experience, an event where I have no say or possibility to interact or influence what I see happening?
A few years ago I stopped following the daily news. Not because I was uninterested in what was going on in the world, but because I wasn’t seeing anything I hadn’t seen many times already, and I started to question what more I thought I needed to know before I started to act as if I knew what I already did. I felt like my part in this life was reduced to being a member of the audience, and the more I was made to watch, the more helpless I felt. I remembered my education, and the state of “learned helplessness”, which occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so.
I’m not saying look away. I’m saying, act on what you are seeing. Accept responsibility for the time you have here on this earth. Are you a witness, or simply a member of the audience?
I am reminded by James Baldwin, who said that
Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.
Witness I-VI (2025)
Spraypaint and watercolors on paper
A3 280 gsm