The Clothesline Project

Arts Agenda

The Clothesline Project by Orin Buck

Just a brief note this month - consider viewing the Clothesline Project, part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Like the AIDS Quilt project, the Clothesline Project is an expression of victims, in this case the mostly female victims of mostly male domestic violence. Instead of quilting, these victims scrawl their feelings and memories directly onto T-shirts.

The T-shirt art of the Clothesline Project is much more personal and direct than T-shirt art designed to be a message or image for the consumer. These domestic violence victims are expressing their own raw feelings, not trying to sell T-shirts. It is hard to imagine anyone actually wearing these tortured condensations of the pain, betrayal, fear and injury caused by domestic violence.

I happened to see part of the project at the last Take Back the Night" rally in back of Community High School. I didn't take notes, and I can't remember specific shirts, but the emotional experience outstripped most art shows l've seen. Each was different; some were messages of hate or forgiveness, some were memories of specific incidents, some were pictures of broken hopes and dreams. Some were incoherent. Some of the shirts were decorated by surviving friends or family members as a monument to victims who were murdered.

Now I realize that what I saw that day is related to Art Brut. Art Brut is the art of people without formal training who achieve a unique expression in isolation from the art world, and who now are increasingly sought out and appropriated by the art world. Not all of the T-shirts makers are completely ignorant of art, but skill doesn't get in the way of expression, or substitute for it, as it does in the worst Art Fair art. Some could have been painted by people whose hands were cut off. The T-shirts of the Clothesline Project are such direct expressions of life that you don't think of art as you appreciate them. Art lovers might benefit from this experience.

Parts of the Clothesline Project are on display in the Ann Arbor Public Library all this month, and in the Watts Rm., U-M Michigan Union, Oct. 24-27. Also: "The Silent Witness," an exhibit of silhouettes of 30 women killed by their dates, is at Washtenaw Community College Oct. 12-13.