Red dresses represent missing, slain women

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This article was published 03/10/2015 (3949 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg artist Jaime Black is asking Canadians to hang up a red dress Sunday, as part of a public display of support for 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women.

Similar displays have been held for the last five years on university and college campuses across Canada and in galleries as art installations as the REDress project.

An exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, for example, has earned descriptions such as “striking” and “haunting” for its visual effect.

There, a dozen or more red dresses hang in front of a photographic backdrop filled with birch trees.

That’s an image with a lot of impact, since the museum overlooks the Red River, not far from the spot where police retrieved the remains of Tina Fontaine in 2014. The missing teen’s body was pulled from the river. She had been slain. Tina, who was from Sagkeeng First Nation, came to symbolize indigenous women who are victims of violence. She disappeared while under Child and Family Services protection in Winnipeg.

Black’s art installation is not just open to the public; the artist is asking Canadians to create their own versions of it for one day.

“I’m trying to put it out far and wide. I’m asking the public to take the reins on this project and show support for indigenous women by displaying a red dress at their home or business on Oct. 4, which is the National Day of Action for Violence Against Indigenous Women.”

A Facebook page, called REDress, has garnered 5,000 likes.

Black said she’s met with community groups in Winnipeg as well, who have expressed an interest in organizing community displays in public spaces Sunday.

“My original intention was to display an empty red dress,” Black said. She believes the image of a red dress hanging outside with the wind or rain playing on it and moving it will be a powerful image anywhere it’s displayed.

By letting the weather animate the cloth at will, the effect symbolizes the vulnerability of every indigenous woman who has disappeared or been slain.

“It creates a space for indigenous women’s voices to be heard,” Black said.

“On a spiritual level, these dresses have a lot of power. It’s uncanny that every single time I put them up, it feels like someone is standing beside me.

“I turn around and it’s a dress. I’ve been doing this for such a long time and it still has that effect,” Black said.

Through calls and links on social media, the message is getting out and people have responded with their support, Black said.

“People have brought it to my attention that every thrift store in Canada is going to be cleaned out of red dresses; nobody will be able to find one, if things go the way we’re wanting them to go.”

(The REDress project is not connected to a second exhibit at the rights museum displaying a red dress, which was worn by Mareshia Rucker, 19, to the first integrated prom at the Wilcox County High School in Rochelle, Ga.)

 

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca