Remember: Rwanda.
This week marks the Genocide Remembrance week in Rwanda. It’s a time of national mourning for the events of 1994 (the actual mournig period goes from April 7th thru July 4th - the day that the majority of the killings stopped).
I feel a connection to Rwanda not because I saw Hotel Rwanda or read about the Remembrance week on BBC, but because one of my best friends is currently serving in the Peace Corps in Rwanda. She has shared some of her experiences of visiting the Genocide Memorial, and I don’t doubt that her next update/letter will be peppered with observations from this week. I can’t imagine it will be easy on her.
Should be an insightful exhibit. Wish you could be here to see it with me, D!
Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape
During the 1994 genocide, more than 100,000 Rwandan women were subjected to massive sexual violence. Among the survivors, the most isolated are the women who have borne children as a result of being raped. Over the past three years, photographer Jonathan Torgovnik made repeated visits to these women and their children, and recorded their heart-wrenching stories.
“Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape” brings together Torgovnik’s powerful documentation of these women. The exhibition, on view in both the Kinsey and Hedreen Gallery, is comprised of twenty-five stunning individual portraits of the women with their children accompanied by their testimonies—intensely personal accounts of the daily challenges they continue to face, and their conflicted feelings about raising a child who is a reminder of horrors endured.
The exhibition will be featured in the Hedreen Gallery in the Lee Center for the Arts at Seattle University March 29 through May 29, 2010.
Web site: http://www.foundationrwanda.org
