Returning us imaginatively to the event of violation, & allowing it to affect us

Thank you Yoko Ono. I found details about this exhibition on her Imagine Peace website. Off the Beaten Path will open at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo next week. (And thanks, Twitter, for pointing me to Imagine Peace.)

The exhibition document says that the Art Gallery of Wellington New Zealand is one of the 'target galleries'. Is this Te Papa, or the Wellington City Gallery?

In the meantime, it's possible to take a virtual tour of the exhibition.

The curator, Randy Jayne Rosenberg, writes:

When we encounter violence against women, we often experience a kind of blindness... The stories that underlie these artworks by 32 artists from around the world return us imaginatively to the event of violation and allow it to affect us.

I've just been reading a report on my second draft of Development-the-movie, and trying work out what I still need to change. I want the audience to be deeply engaged with and moved by the story and the characters who live in it. And part of that means I have to make sure that the story returns the audience's imaginations to the "event(s) of violation" that affect women who want to make feature films. So I'm thrilled to be able to walk around Off the Beaten Path.

Off the Beaten Path satisfies me in a way that other recent exhibitions of women's work has not. Many of the images affect me viscerally. And grouped together they make me think. Maybe because the show's been created to "create awareness...and address systems for positive social change and action".

The United Nations may be about to create a new fund for women. I hope that Off the Beaten Path inspires advocates for the new agency to consider and to provide for women's storytelling, because it's an essential element in women's development, and of our participation in public life.

This image, from the Violence in Politics section of the show is from Sweden's Amnesty International campaign, Rose Petals.