Joe Biel on the intimate and the mythic

For me the most striking thing about seeing Torture of Women reproduced in a book is how it calls attention to the idea of scale in Spero’s work in a few ways. First, there is the curious sensation that the work seems bigger by seeing it together in a smaller format—more specifically, the epic qualities of each actual “room” the physical work would be in when exhibited are magnified since we see all of the panels together in the book. Second, by making the pieces “smaller” in book form, the intimate scale of the book merges (in the mind of the reader) with the notion of the “epic” to create a quality which for I myself would identify as mythic. Interesting given Spero’s dependence on mythical imagery, and for me, the mythic quality is far more effective in the book than in the actual installations (where the political seems to me to be less transformed).

—Joe Biel, artist

William F Schulz on the representation of torture

Here is one the paradoxes associated with torture: words, essential as they are, can never entirely capture the experience but photographs capture it too graphically – too graphically, that is, for many people to bear.

When I was executive director of Amnesty International USA (1994-2006), we were intrigued by reports from our counterparts in Amnesty UK that their direct mail solicitations had included explicit photos of the wounds suffered by survivors of torture and that those mailings had generated far more income for them than usual. Our mailings had contained only word descriptions of brutality. Would pictures generate more sympathy and hence more revenues? Much to our surprise, exactly the opposite happened. Perhaps Americans are more squeamish than the British but those mailings were a disaster. “I know what is going on is horrific and I bless and support you for your work but please don’t send me any more photographs,” was a typical response. “I can’t stand to look at them.”

Part of the genius of Nancy Spero’s work is that she has given us the words – we need them to record the facts in hard-nosed black and white – but she has done far more than that. She has given us startling, compelling images – not photographs that may repel us but powerful images – that capture both the terror of the violation of our flesh but also the power of survivors. Yes, women may be subjected to the most hideous crimes but they are not victims, this masterpiece says; through their genius and their grit and their grace they take a world turned upside down and right it.

I have been privileged to know many survivors of torture, a majority of them women, who are just like that—determined not to let the perpetrators win. Nancy Spero’s book speaks for them and, in doing so, to and for us all.

—William F. Schulz, executive director, Amnesty International, 1994 – 2006

The conversation begins March 29

On March 29—one month before the official publication date of Nancy Spero’s Torture of Women on April 30—we will begin posting short essays, meditations, and responses to Torture of Women by artists, activists, writers, scholars and others we have invited to contribute to the blog. We also invite you and look forward to your contributions to the conversation, too. (See the page: How do you join the conversation?)

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Torture of Women, by acclaimed feminist artist Nancy Spero, juxtaposes first person testimony by female victims of torture with startling imagery drawn from ancient mythology. A public cry of outrage as well as a nuanced exploration of the continuum of violence against women, it is a work of art that—even thirty years after it was originally created—is ever radical, raising provocative questions that cross the borders of art, politics, feminism, and human rights.

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Siglio’s publication of Torture of Women “translates” this epic, 125 ft. image+text work into nearly 100 pages of detail so that the entirety of the work—with legible texts and vibrant color reproductions—can be experienced with immediacy and intimacy. The book was conceived not to simply catalog the work but to create a space in which the reader can fully engage it as it unfolds from page to page. The design of the book encourages multiple acts of reading Torture of Women—as an innovative and polyphonous narrative, as a feminist disquisition, as a register of political protest and outrage, and as a fierce and enduring work of art.

With a story by Luisa Valenzuela, an excerpt from Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, and an essay by Diana Nemiroff. ISBN: 978-0-9799562-2-5.

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The book can be ordered directly from Siglio beginning March 22. Sign up for the Siglio mailing list to get a 20% off discount valid until the publication date. Once the book has been released, it can be purchased on-line at Siglio or from your local, independent bookstore, as well as museum and contemporary art center stores nationwide.