The Clothesline Project
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Throughout its 30-year history, WLRC programming in April has centered around Sexual Assault Awareness Month and engaged campus and community audiences in important conversations about gender-based violence. Join The Clothesline Project at UIC throughout the Spring 2023 semester at multiple opportunities across campus to provide a space to share messages of resilience, healing, and hope for individuals and communities impacted by interpersonal violence and abuse.
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The Clothesline Project is an interactive exhibit of messages of resilience, healing, and hope for individuals and communities impacted by interpersonal violence and abuse. The initiative began in 1990 with a group of Massachusetts women who wanted to give survivors an opportunity to speak out about their experiences. Since then, college campuses, crisis centers, and community organizations throughout the U.S. and around the world have hosted Clothesline Project events to bear witness to violence against women.
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One of the women, visual artist Rachel Carey-Harper, moved by the power of the AIDS quilt, presented the concept of using shirts–hanging on a clothesline–as the vehicle for raising awareness about this issue. The idea of using a clothesline was a natural. Doing the laundry was always considered women’s work and in the days of close-knit neighborhoods women often exchanged information over backyard fences while hanging their clothes out to dry.
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The concept was simple–let each woman tell her story in her own unique way, using words and/or artwork to decorate her shirt. Once finished, she would then hang her shirt on the clothesline. This very action serves many purposes. It acts as an educational tool for those who come to view the Clothesline; it becomes a healing tool for anyone who makes a shirt–by hanging the shirt on the line, survivors, friends and family can literally turn their back on some of that pain of their experience and walk away; finally it allows those who are still suffering in silence to understand that they are not alone.
