Jana Leo "Rape New York"
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS
This event has ended.
In January 2001, soon after moving to New York, Jana Leo was held hostage and raped during the course of an afternoon in her apartment.
The documents assembled here, seven years in the making, accompany the release of her book RAPE NEW YORK. The archive consists of photographs from her emergency visit to the hospital, police reports, crime scene photographs, notes from her therapist, as well as records from the civil suit and other assorted items and documents related to the rape and the legal case that followed, none of which can be reproduced, or even reviewed without the victims’ consent. The documents are kept in organized boxes to be retrieved by the archivist, not displayed on the gallery walls. The archive is not presented to the visitor; instead, each guest must fully identify oneself (photo ID is required), and request materials from the archivist. This way, the visitor takes responsibility for what’s requested, making private again what was made public by Leo—the latest revolution in a cycle of public and private that began with the rape itself.
It is difficult to talk about rape, and even more so to allow strangers to sift through the private and often disturbing materials. But to Leo, the archive is a necessary investigation into the “disruption of [her] close memories.” RAPE NEW YORK is a raw, deeply personal work, but also a fully public endeavor, in which the artist asks the viewer to reexamine in clinical detail her own harrowing experience. Leo has censored nothing, and asks the same clear-eyed focus of all archive visitors.
Media
Schedule
from June 26, 2009 to June 28, 2009